


jim kirk's guide to starship management: how to work with people you don't like

by espressohno



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anonymous Sex, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Shore Leave, Slow Burn, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27004819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: step one: don't hook up with them!edit: author has failed step onesecond fic from last year's trektober prompts, turned into its own au. the prompt: anonymous hookup
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 157
Kudos: 222





	1. Chapter 1

“So how’d  _ you _ end up on this sad excuse of a starbase?”

“Nope,” Jim said, mostly to himself, because the urge to tell his life story to this very attractive man at the bar was weirdly tempting. He seemed like a good listener. And from what Jim had learned from their conversation leading up to this moment, which started with  _ drinking alone? _ and then consisted of nothing but complaining about space, starbases, this bar, and the drinks at this bar, he probably would have some funny things to say about Jim’s life story, too. But still, “No personal information.”

The guy looked like he wanted to laugh. He raised an eyebrow and lifted his drink to his lips. 

“And why not?” he asked. He took a slow sip while Jim answered, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. 

“Because it’s probably going to complicate things. I don’t want this to be complicated.”

“Fair enough.” His voice was rough like the liquor had burned a little bit at the end there. Rough and pretty goddamn sexy. Although the first thing that had drawn Jim to this man was his look, the way it shot through Jim’s entire body when they caught eyes across the bar--the subtle, almost undetectable smile at the corners of his mouth and his eyes as Jim wove his way through the crowd to stand next to him. And then...other things. The way his jeans sat low on his hips and the way his jacket stretched across his chest, the artful messiness of his hair. The stubble on his cheeks. Maybe Jim had been in space too long, but seeing someone break so many Starfleet uniform regulations was undeniably sexy. 

“I’m guessing no names, then?” he asked next, and Jim nodded. His head already felt heavier from the alcohol. By the time he finished this cocktail he’d be tipsy enough to shake the Captain-voice out of the back of his head but still sober enough to give this guy some mind-blowing sex. 

“Absolutely not.” Jim smiled. 

Without needing to coordinate it, they both knocked back the last of their drinks. 

“You know,” he said, and that rough edge in his voice made Jim feel warm, “I’d say my temporary quarters on this base definitely qualify as  _ impersonal _ .”

Jim studied him for a moment, the dark hunger in his eyes, the challenging, inviting smile on his face, the way he was leaning so close now that Jim could smell his cologne. He managed to turn off that Captain-voice in record time, forgetting that he was on this starbase for a reason, that he should be on-call for the rest of the night even though he’d given the crew a day off since they got here, that tomorrow morning he had to be in the main operations office at 0800 to pick up the new CMO of the Enterprise. All of that could wait. 

“Lead the way.”

-

Jim wasn’t sure if it just meant that his standards were low (especially at this particular point of his Starship-Captain-dry-spell) that he considered it the best sex of his life. 

Either way, the feeling seemed to be somewhat mutual. Considering the sex lasted more than half the night, starting with a makeout-turned blowjob in the doorway of this guy’s (decidedly spartan) quarters. They made it to the bed after that, where Jim happily reciprocated the doorway blowjob he’d just gotten, took in the sight of his lean, tanned body spread out on the bed and felt like he was getting drunk all over again just on the sounds he made while Jim had his cock in his mouth. 

It was a really nice cock, too. Jim almost started to wonder if this was too good to be true, if it could even be possible for him to find such a perfect man on his first night off in months. 

And then he remembered that he knew absolutely nothing about him. 

There could be plenty of red flags, he just didn’t ask any questions other than _ is that good _ ,  _ do you want this _ ,  _ can you touch me here _ ,  _ can you go faster _ . 

But Jim wanted to ask all those other questions, too. He wanted to ask how this guy had ended up on such a weird little starbase, why his suitcase looked big enough to carry his whole life inside of it. He wanted to know how long he’d been here, and how long he was staying, where he was before this and where he would go next. 

Space was making him sentimental, or something. Because questions kept popping into his head even when his date was fucking him into the mattress and he couldn’t breathe without moaning, could barely even form the words to say  _ yes, harder _ , every time that deep voice behind him asked  _ are you still with me? _

He caught himself wondering if it would be weird to ask for this guy’s information in the morning, if it would really be  _ so _ optimistic to think they’d see each other again. He quickly pushed the thought out of his mind, which turned out to be easy as soon as the next thrust found his prostate and pleasure shot up his body like a firework. 

Plus, he had to remember they knew nothing about each other.  _ No personal information. _ Those were his own damn words. 

So what if they collapsed on the bed afterwards, chests heaving and legs and arms tangled together and Jim turned to look at him and they shared such a private sort of smile, like this was anything but their first time? Then there was the fact that neither of them seemed to assume that Jim would leave right away, to the point where this guy didn’t even bother to ask before he turned on the replicator and negotiated some very average-tasting burgers out of it. Jim laughed and poked fun at him when he seemingly covered his entire plate--burger, fries, and all--with ketchup, and he snapped back like the two of them had some long history of banter. Like they hadn’t met just hours before. 

They ended up in a deep conversation about the effects of life in space on the human psyche and Jim almost forgot the fact that he’d come here to have sex, that this was a one time, temporary, anyonymous, forgettable thing happening, that he was sitting naked on the couch with an equally naked stranger. It tugged at his heartstrings a little when he realized that this wasn’t the start of a friendship--that it wasn’t the start of anything, it would just be a single point on the map of Jim’s life--because they talked so easily it could have been their millionth conversation, and they laughed and teased each other and couldn’t even get mad over the things they disagreed on. 

Space was making him sentimental, definitely. 

And then he was clearing the plates from between them on the couch, and Jim remembered what this night had actually been about, probably in the same moment that his eyes landed on this guy’s cock again. So he crawled to the other side of the couch and into his lap and kissed him again, pulling back for a second to feign disgust at the overwhelming taste of ketchup. They both dissolved into laughter and Jim couldn’t stop smiling, even as he was being flipped over against the cool surface of the couch. 

“No, wait,” he said, breathless, regretting it a little bit because he was literally about to get fucked again as he said it and then all contact ceased. “I mean, I wanna turn over. Wanna see you.”

“Oh,” he said. He lifted up off of Jim enough for Jim to wiggle onto his back. 

That was probably the most reckless decision Jim made that night. After all his wistful thinking--after coming home with this guy in the first place, this guy he knew  _ nothing _ about--the stupidest thing he did was lie there looking right into his eyes the next time they both came. 

Because that face was never going to leave his head, after that. That face, and those hands, and his sarcastic comments and dry laughter and the stupid ketchup taste in his mouth. 

Fuck. 

-

Jim yawned. His hangover wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d expected, but then again, he hadn’t really been at that bar last night to get drunk. He only drank for as long as it took to find that guy he went home with. That guy he hadn’t even given a proper goodbye to. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty over that. One, they both knew that this was going to be a one-time thing. A nameless, one-time thing. And two, he’d clearly had somewhere to go as well, the way they both catapulted out of bed as soon as they saw the time. Jim pulled his clothes on so fast that he’d forgotten underwear--which he realized once he was back in his quarters on the ship changing into full uniform. He was pretty sure he’d said some _ sort  _ of goodbye, even if it was just one word thrown over his shoulder. He hoped he’d given at least that much, after what could very well have been the best hookup he’d ever had. 

He needed to just stop worrying about it. Being Captain had changed something about his empathy, apparently. He couldn’t remember ever being so concerned about hurting someone’s feelings after a one-night stand. 

“Are you unwell, Jim?” Spock asked. They were waiting for the starbase manager to track down the transfer records from their database. And their new CMO--whoever they were--was apparently late. 

“No, no, I’m fine,” Jim said, waving his hand dismissively. “A little hungover,” he added quietly. 

Spock nodded in understanding, even though he’d probably spent his night off on the ship making spreadsheets or something. Jim coughed to cover up a laugh and straightened his posture. 

“Those records must really be buried, huh?” Jim asked, raising his voice. 

“Something like that,” the manager said. She laughed awkwardly, trying to tap through their files as fast as possible. Since Jim’s new CMO was late by ten minutes already he hoped this person could be even later, at least for as long as it took to pull up their records and get a jump on their info before everyone finally met. 

“We’ve never handled a crewmember transfer on this base before, it kind of got lost with all our cargo records,” she said, voice a little apologetic. Jim shrugged. 

“Don’t worry about it, I’m sure we’ve got time.”

“Should we interpret this tardiness as precedent for the work ethic of our new CMO?” Spock asked. Jim snorted. 

“I think we can give them a one-day grace period before we start telling on them to Starfleet.”

“That’s awful considerate of you,” someone said from the doorway behind them, and oh god. 

Oh  _ god. _

Jim knew that voice. 

From the tone of it, though, the guy didn’t seem to recognize the back of Jim’s head yet. 

_ Although he definitely should _ , Jim thought,  _ considering how much he saw of it last night-- _

Jim choked a little bit on his next breath, mentally kicking himself for even allowing his brain to replay that memory at a time like this. He cleared his throat, tried--and probably failed--to suppress the urge to blush, and turned around. 

“Are you the new CMO assigned to the Enterprise?” Spock asked, and thank fuck he did, because once Jim and his apparently-new-CMO-who-he-fucked-three-times-last-night-and-now-has-to-work-with locked eyes, Jim lost the ability to form thoughts with his brain and words with his mouth. 

It looked like he wasn’t the only one. It was completely and unbearably silent before he finally said, 

“Yes,”

at the same time the base manager piped up, 

“I found it! Leonard McCoy, CMO!”

Leonard-- _ jesus christ jesus FUCK _ \--swallowed hard and nodded, apparently unable to make eye contact with anyone except for Jim. All of a sudden Jim realized why he was so late, because his face was clean shaven, and his hair was styled, and he was wearing perfectly-pressed science blues. 

Jim had assumed last night that most of his attraction to Leonard came from the fact that he  _ didn’t _ look like a Starfleet officer. Apparently, that wasn’t it. 

“That’s me,” Leonard said. 

Jim sincerely hoped that Spock was as bad at interpreting social nuances as everyone assumed, because there was no way he sounded  _ anything _ but awkward when he finally blurted out, 

“Nice to meet you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Jim just had to get it over with. The longer he put it off the harder it would be to walk down to the Medbay and talk to his new CMO about the fact that they had sex last night. It was already nearing the end of the shift, which Jim had spent almost entirely on the bridge doing nothing, watching Pavel and Hikaru navigate them out of the star system. He had planned on using this time in between assignments to help their new CMO get settled in--show them around Medbay, around the ship, introduce them to everyone, explain the different applications in their quarters, that sort of thing. None of that had felt like a good idea this morning after their fateful introduction (reintroduction, technically) back on the starbase. Especially not the last part. Jim, Spock, and Leonard had suffered through another ten minutes of stale conversation and bureaucratic paperwork before beaming onto the Enterprise, and then Jim, at the last second, decided to assign all of these tasks to Spock, who did not look particularly thrilled about it. 

Spock was in an even worse mood when he returned to the bridge right before shift change. 

“Spock! How’s our new CMO doing?”

He walked across the bridge to his station, even though nobody here had anything to do at this point, and said plainly, “Seeing as Doctor McCoy has yet to perform any medicine on this ship, I cannot pass judgement on his work today.”

Jim knew this was already the setup to an insult. As much as he wanted to think highly of the man he’d spent the entire night with, he couldn’t help being curious. 

“Can you pass judgement on anything else?”

Spock lifted his head from his station to look at Jim for a moment. 

“He appears to be both uninterested in space travel and offended by the majority of modern technology, and has already accumulated a number of complaints which I have informed him should be discussed with the Captain, and not with me.”

“Sounds like you two had fun today.”

“Had I been consulted, I would not have chosen him for this position.”

“Well, I didn’t choose him either,” Jim said, although he definitely would have--not only did Leonard McCoy have an outstanding CV, but on his file it stated that five other ships and a starbase had already requested him as CMO before Starfleet offered him the position on the Enterprise. Also, he was hot, but Jim knew how to separate church and state. 

Spock stared at him for a moment longer, his equivalent of a sort of flat, unimpressed look. Before looking down at his station again, he added, 

“Doctor McCoy has also informed me that he wishes to speak with you.”

Jim’s stomach flipped. He had to do it, anyway. He was planning on forcing himself to make a visit to Medbay today anyway, but the fact that Leonard had the same idea already--

god this was going to be awkward. 

But Jim did it anyway. He was Captain of the ship, for christ’s sake, he could handle much more difficult situations than just an awkward conversation with last night’s hookup. 

His shift ended and he headed down to the Medbay, greeting everyone he walked past. Remembering everybody’s name was a good distraction from the fact that he was freaking out a little bit. With his  _ I’m a Captain and that was just a hookup _ pep talk he’d had in his own head, he had been ignoring the part where last night’s hookup was a little more than just a hookup, and that he’d now be working alongside him on the Enterprise indefinitely, two facts which came up as soon as he got out of the turbolift. 

“Nurse Chapel,” Jim nodded at her as she walked through the Medbay doors towards him. 

She only responded with wide eyes, and a very unsettling shake of her head back and forth, basically a non-verbal equivalent of  _ you don’t want to know _ . Jim felt his smile turn a little stale, and then it was completely gone when he walked inside the Medbay and saw the new Doctor McCoy antagonizing three of the junior nurses. 

His perfectly pressed uniform from this morning was already wrinkled, his sleeves pushed up above his elbows, and his hair was messy and out of place, and his voice was loud enough that Jim almost flinched from the other side of the room. 

“Who taught you to do this? Did you learn medicine in a barn?”

Only one of the nurses was brave enough to respond, but was cut off after one syllable.

“W--”

“Don’t answer that! From now on you do what I tell you, and I’m telling you all scalpels need to be sanitized and individually packaged.”

“But we--”

“Did I ask for input?”

She promptly shut her mouth, and her entire face started to turn red. Jim felt like he was watching a car crash. A car crash where the offending car kept reversing and hitting the other car again and again. 

“I know you live on a ship where everything is clean and pretty and you think sanitizer is enough, but sanitizer ain’t gonna do shit for you when you’ve got a patient with the Dramian plague spreading airborne particles through the whole damn Medbay and landing on your tray full of scalpels that you’re about to use to cut someone open with. What are you gonna tell the patient who came in for a routine operation and got an accelerated killer virus injected right into their bloodstream?  _ That just sanitizer is enough? _ You tell your patients that just sugar is enough to stop infection?”

This time nobody responded, knowing full well by now that their new boss wasn’t actually asking a question. They all stood with their heads down, staring at their shoes. 

“ _ Sanitized _ and  _ individually wrapped _ . I don’t want to see another tray full of clean scalpels in my Medbay again. Got it?”

They all hastily nodded and took their chance to escape. Jim wiped the shock off of his face and tried to act natural as they rushed past him.

“Nurses Soto, Bogdanow, Gonzales, good afternoon.”

None of them responded to him either on their way to the supply room, where they presumably went to sanitize and package scalpels and break into tears. 

Jim looked up and locked eyes with Leonard McCoy, who was still visibly fuming and barely recognizeable from the last two times Jim had seen him, and decided to put the sex thing on the back burner for now. 

“Doctor McCoy, can I have a word, please?”

Leonard nodded and they walked to the CMO’s office at the back of Medbay. Apparently, in addition to annoying Spock and verbally abusing his staff, he’d also managed to rearrange the entire room. Busy day. 

Neither of them sat down. Even after the doors has closed behind them and they were well out of ear shot, Jim still kept his voice low to say, 

“That really wasn’t necessary, or appropriate, the way you handled that.”

Jim had been expecting more aggression in response, but Leonard’s face only softened and turned to something like surprise, and it took a second before Jim realized that it was probably because, other than a few strained minutes earlier that morning, Leonard wasn’t familiar with Jim-as-Captain. 

Finally he furrowed his eyebrows again.

“They ought to know how to run a Medbay. Whoever was here in my place taught them bad habits.”

“I understand, but we’re all adults here, even the junior staff. You can correct them in a way that doesn’t come off as aggressive and demeaning.”

“I  _ can _ , but it wouldn’t work the same.”

“I disagree.”

“Respectfully,  _ Captain _ , I don’t believe you’ve had to run a Medbay before,” Leonard said, in a way that was only marginally respectful. Jim felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. 

“That’s not how we talk to each other here,” was all he could think to counter it. 

“I’ll ease up when they earn it.”

Now Jim was fighting the urge to clench his fists and tense up his shoulders and say something unprofessional, himself. And it only took about three minutes. Leonard clearly had no space in his  _ leadership style _ for constructive criticism, even from his  _ actual boss _ . They were still toe to toe, right next to the doors of his office. Jim forced himself to relax his posture; he couldn’t set a precedent like this. He took a deep breath. 

“Look, I’m not telling you how to run your Medbay, but I know my crew, and I’ve worked hard to create a culture on this ship where we treat everyone with respect.”

That made Leonard cross his arms over his chest. Jim glanced down at his forearms, just for a second--a fraction of a second--and then he met Leonard’s eyes again. He looked like he was ready for another rampage, but his voice was deceptively plain. 

“There are mistakes being made by the nursing staff, little ones that seem like no big deal to them, but if any of those little mistakes were to lead to a real accident, we’d all be discharged. Now I can see that hasn’t happened yet, and that’s why you think I’m being aggressive, but I’m not going to compromise my standards just because it makes you uncomfortable.”

Jim wished he could argue with that, but he’d already said all he could on the matter, and Leonard didn’t care. He could have gone so far as to  _ order  _ Leonard to act a certain way, but he knew that wouldn’t help anything at this point. His only option, really, was to give up, leave Medbay, and go complain privately to Spock. 

He held eye contact for a few moments more, and Leonard wasn’t going to stand down, clearly, so he turned to leave. 

“Wait a second.”

Jim turned back, and Leonard had loosened up his posture a bit, and his face didn’t look angry when he said, 

“About last night--”

“We don’t have to talk about that right now.” Jim really did not want to talk about that right now.

“I just want to make it clear that I wouldn’t have hooked up with you if I knew who you were.”

Jim exhaled through his teeth. 

“Great, thanks for letting me know.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, jesus christ, I’m trying to save my job.”

“Yeah.” Jim dragged a hand down his face, stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose.  _ How was this the same man he’d had life-altering sex with last night? _ He wanted nothing more than to leave this room and never enter it again. “I wouldn’t worry about what happened last night, that was before you were officially part of my crew.”

_ And it’ll never happen again _ , Jim wanted to say, but he saved that thought and let it swirl around in his brain while he walked out of Leonard’s office, past the terrified nurses and out of Medbay, and back to his quarters to break a Starfleet regulation of his own, and have a drink. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry yall this is just straight exposition because i'm accidentally making a whole ass alternate universe over here. next chapter will contain drama

For two weeks Jim watched everyone in the Med crew walk the halls of the Enterprise like they were headed for their death. He wanted to intervene, especially after the first few times he asked some of them if everything was alright (which got only platitudes in return about a  _ rough day at work _ ), but every time he lingered outside of the Medbay doors, he talked himself out of it. Sometimes the doors would open, and he’d make eye contact with Doctor McCoy where he was standing next to a biobed or barking orders at his staff, always looking pissed off at something, and he’d talk himself out of intervening at record speed. After how useless he’d felt on that first day, he couldn’t imagine he’d make any progress without coming up with some new way to challenge him. Clearly, an adult conversation was out of the question. 

But it bothered Jim so much to watch an entire department on the ship-- _ his ship _ \--walking around on eggshells because of their new CMO. Sometimes the tension made it all the way up to the bridge, where Jim could hear whispered rumors about Doctor McCoy’s voice echoing, or his death glare from across the mess, or that they knew someone who knew someone in Medbay who was threatened by him. 

There turned out to be one exception to the new ship dynamic, though. Nurse Chapel appeared to be untouched by all of it, even after weeks of actually  _ working  _ in the Medbay with him. She was unbothered, walking the halls like always, even rolling her eyes sometimes and shaking her head, when Jim passed by and nervously asked how things were going. 

Finally Jim had to know what her secret was. He joined her for breakfast. 

“Oh, good morning, Captain.” She looked surprised to see him sitting down at the table across from her. Christine was eating early, just like Jim, with coffee and oatmeal and a PADD in one hand. Probably for the same reasons, too. The mess was always quiet at this time, two hours before Beta shift. Most officers were still sleeping right now, or just stumbling out of bed to the sonic shower. 

“Just Jim,” he replied, “it’s too early for anyone to call me Captain.”

Christine smiled a little bit. He’d always liked her. She had kept her distance when they were first on the ship together, but it turned out it was because she heard things about Jim before joining his crew, rumors from some people who knew him in the Academy, and those first few weeks were a sort of test. Once Jim passed she was still sort of quiet, but always friendly. 

“Something on your mind?”

She was also very perceptive. 

“Yeah, I’m worried about Medical.”

“Oh. Well…” 

Jim could see in her expression that she was trying to find something comforting to say about the situation down in Medbay, but after a few seconds he let her off the hook. 

“Mainly I wanted to ask you why you seem unfazed by all of it. I figured you two would be butting heads.”

Christine tilted her head to the side, thinking. She wore a light blue variation of the Medbay uniform and always had her hair pulled up when she was on shift, but this morning it was down, curling around her shoulders, and her silver-blonde bangs fell across her forehead in a way that she’d probably fix before she went to work. She looked relaxed, on the opposite end of the spectrum from every other Medical officer Jim had seen on their way to their shift. 

“But it doesn’t look like you’re having issues with him at all.”

“I think I just have a different perspective towards Leonard.”

Jim let that sink in for a second. Towards  _ Leonard... _ hold on--

“Have you worked with him before?”

She nodded. “My first off-planet assignment. We were on the Berlin. He was just a doctor on the ship back then, and I was a junior nurse, but we spent a lot of time together. He taught me a lot.”

Jim was trying to imagine how different this man must have been that Christine could be recalling memories of him so casually. He pictured the nurses on the Enterprise describing these days in the future--he was pretty sure they’d be war stories. 

“Was he…”

“Like that?”

“Yeah.”

She seemed to reach further in her memory, then, squinting a little bit until there was a wrinkle in between her eyebrows. 

“A little bit. He didn’t have as much responsibility, but he’s always been the kind of person who needs everything to be a certain way.”

“And you’re, what, totally fine with him talking down to the nursing staff because of that?”

She cringed a little bit. 

“He came on a lot stronger than I expected that day. I’ve already met with the nursing staff to tell them not to take it too hard,” Christine said, and Jim must have made a face that showed exactly how he felt about Leonard McCoy, and how he felt about her enabling him. “Look,” she cut in, “you’ve read his file. Do you know why he’s so sought after as CMO even though he’s as harsh as he is?”

“Harsh is kind of a forgiving term, isn’t it.”

Christine breathed out a laugh, shaking her head. “Every Medbay he’s worked in has been transformed because of it. Higher standards, better training, better work ethic, lower margin of error, everything. He starts off as a hard-ass but he doesn’t keep it up very long. It’s some sort of formula he has.”

“That doesn’t really make me feel better.”

She shrugged. “He’s not very popular right now, but the things he gets angry about are things I have problems with, too. He’s just better at catching mistakes than I am. Than anybody is.”

“So, what, he’s going to bully everyone in Medbay for a while and then call it a day and become a regular CMO?”

“He’ll have submitted himself for reassignment by then.”

Jim startled, snapping out of whatever foggy, morning trance he’d been wading through. He looked up from his coffee, and Christine was still talking as if all of this was normal to her. 

“He never stays on the same ship longer than a year. But usually he’s done in six months.”

“ _ What, _ ” Jim asked. “Why the hell would he do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said airily. She pushed her bangs back from her forehead. “But I think part of his aggression is an act. Well, not an act, but I think he knows how to control his temper and just doesn’t. I think he makes himself unlikeable on purpose.”

“So he can leave easier.”

“That’s my theory. It’s all on purpose. How else would he have so many transfers on his record while also only having positive recommendations from Captains?”

“But  _ why _ does he do this?”

“Attachment issues, I guess, I don’t know him that well anymore.” Christine stirred her oatmeal and paused just as she had a spoonful in front of her mouth. “He used to be married.”

Jim didn’t even know what to do with everything he just learned. 

“ _ Attachment issues _ ,” he muttered, following Christine’s lead and returning to his own breakfast. “So what, we’ve all got those, we live in space.”

She laughed, and then they spent the rest of their breakfast mostly in silence.

-

Now Jim was tempted to march all the way down to Medbay and tell their new (and apparently temporary) CMO in no uncertain terms that he refused for his ship and his crew to just be another  _ success story _ on his resume. 

Chief Medical Officer was a serious role. Pike had always told him that. The Captain and the CMO were supposed to work together. So the news that Leonard McCoy had been jumping from ship to ship for the last few years, and that he probably didn’t plan on staying on the Enterprise anyway, felt like a slap in the face. Like Starfleet had played some sort of joke on him. And Jim wanted to tell Leonard all of that. 

First he told Spock, though, who took all of this in without reacting, and finally said, from the other side of the chessboard, 

“Does it not privilege you to know this information about Doctor McCoy without his being aware of it?”

“How would it benefit me not to confront him on this,” Jim asked, genuinely curious. 

Spock looked thoughtful, probably planning his next move and his next sentence at the same time. 

Truth be told, Jim and Spock’s relationship had gotten off to a rough start too. Jim had stepped on a lot of toes in the Academy, which inevitably included Spock, during a semester when he was guest-lecturing due to the Enterprise being out for repairs. 

They’d had more than a few disagreements over Jim’s assignments, his participation in class discussions, Spock’s curriculum, what Jim understood as favoritism for certain students--and something about Spock being technically underqualified made Jim a little too bold in challenging him. He was in and out of Spock’s office hours like the room had a revolving door. Then Spock’s semester was up and the two of them parted ways without any sort of reconciliation, suddenly out of each other’s lives like a storm had abruptly picked up and left. 

The reconciliation came a few years later when Jim got the Enterprise, and somehow Spock ended up being reassigned to the ship, and they were so cold to each other during the bureaucratic process that Pike essentially locked all three of them in a room for the night and forced them to leave on speaking terms the next morning. After that, and after a few months in uncharted space, they started to be friendly. 

This was why he assumed Spock might know what to do about Leonard, but he could tell that Spock had already made up his mind not to like him, either. Quicker than Jim had. 

“Based on what Nurse Chapel shared with you, he is likely acting under the assumption that his behavior does not matter, because he plans to leave once he believes his work is done. If you were to reveal that you know about this plan, it would probably only encourage him in thinking his actions do not have consequences.”

“Hmm.”

“Checkmate.”

“Fuck.”

-

Jim didn’t go down to Medbay after all. In fact, he started avoiding it more than usual, but only after he instructed Christine to be his eyes and ears down there. She was probably better at defusing tension in the Medbay than Jim would be anyway. 

He went almost a week without seeing Leonard McCoy once, and then just as he was gearing up to call all the senior officers to the conference room before their next mission, someone buzzed his office. 

“Come in, please,” he said, staring down at the screen on his desk, “you’re saving me from having to memorize two hundred years of treaties.”

“You’re welcome.”

_ Oh, shit. _

“Doctor McCoy.” Jim thought about forcing a smile but he didn’t bother, because McCoy went right ahead into what he came to see Jim for. 

It was still early in the shift, and he didn’t have that end-of-a-long-ass-day look, no wrinkles in his uniform shirt, no hairs out of place. He almost looked….calm. 

“I need your go-ahead to make some staff changes.”

_ Are you kidding me _ , Jim thought. He knew exactly where this was going. He could only imagine that someone must have made a real effort to stand up to him this time. He sighed. 

“Who do you want to fire,” he asked. 

“Nobody.” Leonard looked at him, offended, like he couldn’t believe Jim’s mind went there--as if it was any sort of  _ leap _ after what he witnessed a few weeks ago. “I need at least three more nurses to start training. I’ve asked around the other science departments and found four ensigns who are interested, I wanted to know if that’s alright, to take that many.”

Jim’s mind totally blanked. Not only was he still reconciling with the fact that Leonard wasn’t going on a rampage right now, but he’d just made a completely normal request. A request which implied he’d  _ discussed _ the issue with  _ other departments _ . What the fuck?

“Uhhh, yeah.” He rubbed his eyes, just in case there was another version of Leonard McCoy hiding behind this one. “I mean, it should be fine, but Spock probably knows more about that section of the crew than I do.”

“Spock has made it pretty clear that I should bring all of my questions to you.”

“Wait,  _ why _ do you need three new nurses? Did some of them quit?”

“If you’re thinking I bullied those three junior nurses out of Medbay, I didn’t.”

Okay, Leonard  _ had _ to stop looking at him like that; Jim really didn’t feel like he needed to defend himself for thinking that he was causing workplace conflicts. The man was a  _ walking  _ conflict. 

“Soto should have been promoted months ago, she was practically training the others. And Gonzales and Martin from Gamma shift have the skillset to start surgical training. I want all of them working higher than junior level. And all of the nursing staff is overworked, so they need to be replaced at least one for one. It’d probably be good to put in a formal request, too, for additional crew members.”

By the time Leonard got to the end of his explanation Jim must have been staring, because he finished talking, crossed his arms over his chest, and then said (demanded, more like), 

“What?”

Jim snapped himself out of it. 

“Nothing, I--go ahead. With the staff changes, I mean. It sounds like you really thought this through.”

It was actually Jim’s approval of his plan that finally triggered Leonard’s twelve-point scowl. “It’s my job to think this through.”

“Of course.” Jim pushed a hand through his hair. He was fidgeting. “Anyway, the crew transfer process should be the same here as it was on the last ship you worked on, I’ll just need to put a final approval on it after the requests are filed.”

Leonard nodded. “Thank you Captain,” he said, and there was an edge to the word  _ Captain _ which Jim didn’t like, almost undercutting the fact that Jim outranked him. Wasn’t  _ he _ the one who came up here to ask permission? Staff changes being filed without Jim’s input wouldn’t even be worth a conversation, after all the ways Leonard has been making Jim’s life difficult up to this point. 

Finally Leonard left and for the third time that week Jim felt completely at a loss for what the hell he was supposed to do about this man. He felt like he was missing something. By all accounts he was terrorizing his staff, and none of the other senior officers had a good word to say about him--except for Nurse Chapel, who viewed the whole thing with an apologetic level of pragmatism--and then in the middle of all this he showed up to Jim’s office to promote the same nurses he’d been yelling at for the past three weeks? 

Every new piece of information he learned about Leonard McCoy forced him to change his mind again. 

And, on top of it, he still felt like he was being pranked. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god, a next day update? who am i?

The ambush came out of nowhere. So did the sharp rock that impaled Jim’s side as they were running for cover. 

“Fuck,” Jim breathed, catching himself on the wall of a cave, which was unsettlingly damp. He turned to lean against it, and then gave up altogether and slid down the wall onto the ground. His senses were overwhelmed by a muddy, acidic smell, and the dampness already leaking through his uniform and making his skin cold, and the shooting pain in his torso. He stared up at the stone surface above him, black with moss, and focused on his next breath. 

“Captain, you’re bleeding.”

“For the love of god,” Jim panted, squeezing his eyes shut, “just don’t call me Captain if you’re gonna say it in that tone.”

“I need to look at it.”

“You don’t even have your medkit.”

“And whose idea was that? You were the one who wanted me on the away team ‘not as CMO but as a member of the crew’, whose fault is it that I didn’t bring my medkit?”

“Oh, yell at me all you want. Just don’t call me Captain again,” Jim muttered, because he had no other counterargument. 

“Fine by me. I still need to look at it.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You can’t even keep your eyes open.”

He was right. One second Jim was looking up at the moss, and then it was dark all of a sudden, and then he’d be blinking back at the ceiling of the cave again. Jim felt something on his face, soft and cool against his cheek, and then his forehead. 

“You’re sweating.”

“Wow, you _are_ a great doctor. What else can you tell me.”

Leonard huffed and took his hand away, and Jim could feel the fabric of his shirts moving. Even just the friction of fabric against the injury hurt enough to make him inhale through his teeth. 

“Raise your arm above your head, and don’t look down.” His voice was different than before. Gentler, like he was tired of arguing. 

Jim heard the sound of fabric ripping. 

“You’ve got a phaser on you. Anything else?”

“I dropped my communicator.”

“I’ve got mine, I already called the ship.” _What, when?_ Jim thought, and wondered if the pain in his side really was bad enough that he was getting delirious. “The frequencies in the atmosphere are all messed up from the weather, but they know to come get us.”

Jim groaned. From the pain, or maybe at the fact that they had to wait for rescue, or because of who he was stuck waiting with. He wasn’t sure.

“Pocket knife,” he gritted out, remembering the question again. 

“You’ve got a pocket knife?”

“Swiss Army. It’s vintage, used to be my dad’s.”

Jim could vaguely feel Leonard’s hands in his pockets, searching. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know why Leonard was looking for his pocket knife in the first place. 

“Are you going to stab me again.”

Leonard laughed once. 

“What is this cowboy medicine you’re about to do.”

“There’s something in there. You said you got hit by a rock?”

“Man, _I don’t know_ ,” Jim whined. 

He felt his shirts being lifted up again. 

“Looks like it was the end of a spear, there’s a piece that broke off.”

“Oh no.”

“I need to take it out, because I think it’s laced with whatever is making you loopy.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“This’ll only take--”

“Don’t you dare.”

Jim heard him using his phaser, then, but it clearly wasn’t aimed at him otherwise he’d be blissfully unconscious. He felt like he could sense Leonard’s hand, and the pocket knife in his hand, and his hand with the pocket knife getting closer. 

“ _No._ ”

“I’m not gonna risk letting this thing stay inside you.”

“ _Leonard--_ ”

The pain wasn’t that bad, actually. It didn’t last long. Only for the few seconds it took for Jim to pass out. 

-

Jim woke up in that same fucking cave, feeling wet and disgusting. And cold, now. He could hear the sound of heavy rain outside, and feel the cool moisture in the air, that sharp, damp smell of the cave mixing with something sweeter. His head felt like it was slowly moving out of the fog from earlier. 

He looked down and saw that the bottom half of his gold shirt had been torn off, and, from the looks of it, wrapped around his midsection underneath his black undershirt. The pain in his side was only a dull, throbbing ache, now. 

When he looked up again, he realized that Leonard was sitting on the other side of the cave, across from him about a meter away, and staring. 

“What did you do?”

Leonard watched him for a second. There was something expectant in his face. For the first time since Jim could remember, since three months ago on the other side of the galaxy when their relationship was entirely different, he didn’t look upset with Jim. His hair was damp and sticking against his forehead, and his blue shirt was stained at the bottom with drying blood, like he’d wiped his hands there, and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked down in his lap, then, and Jim saw that he was still holding the Swiss Army Knife, tracing the smooth edges with his fingertips. 

“Took it out,” he said. “I’ll take the sample up to the ship.”

“Thanks.”

“Felt like I hurt you more than I helped, the way you were screaming at me. But clearly we weren’t getting picked up any time soon.”

“How long have I been out?”

“According to my communicator, two hours.”

“Shit,” Jim mumbled. He looked outside the entrance of the cave, at the sheets of rain pouring down, and hoped the rest of the crew was at least safe, if they weren’t being beamed aboard already. “Have you heard anything?”

“The rest of the team got split up, too. The signals are getting warped so the Enterprise is having trouble locking onto our locations. I told Scotty to find the crew first.”

“Good,” Jim said to the rain.

“Last I heard from him they were still looking for three of them.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, then. Jim thought about his crew. About this planet. He couldn’t even remember what they were doing down here in the first place, or why it was so important. All that had been running through his head leading up to this mission was that he was going to force Leonard to come with them. It felt stupid, now. And yet,

“You are a good officer, you know.”

“You don’t have to pretend to like me just because I might have saved your life.” His voice sounded bitter at the end. Jim ignored it. 

“I mean it. You talk like you’re only out in space to be a doctor, but you’re good at all of this. Being in space, keeping a ship running. Improvising on an unfamiliar planet.”

“Well now you’re just insulting me.”

Jim breathed out a laugh. He pulled his knees up to his chest and looked back at Leonard, sitting across from him. Still not mad. Their relationship had turned aggressive in only a few hours, back on that first day, and apparently it could turn back just as quickly. 

“You think I don’t like you?”

Leonard raised an eyebrow at him. He almost looked like he might smile. “You ever give me a reason to think otherwise?”

“I never had the time. When you weren’t in my face about Medbay protocol you were running off to yell at someone else.”

“I don’t yell all that much.”

Jim gave him a flat look. The corner of Leonard’s mouth started twitching up into a little bit of a smile. 

“Anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Leonard was still absentmindedly passing the pocket knife from one hand to the other. Jim just sat there, watching his hands, and thinking about the fact that he really hadn’t seen this man smile in three months. 

“Look, I know it’s my fault, if you don’t like me.” Leonard ran a hand through his hair, and then went back to fiddling with the pocket knife. “I never really make an effort with people. But I should have tried with you.”

Jim would be lying if he said that those words didn’t make his stomach flip around a bit. It only took a second, though, to realize how low the bar must be, now, for how Leonard acted. Was he supposed to be excited that the man who was mean to everyone suddenly decided he regretted being mean to him, and _only_ him? He frowned. 

“There’s a whole crew up there that deserves your effort, too,” he said, and neither of them spoke again until Scotty came in on Leonard’s communicator, the frequency choppy and full of static, to tell them that he’d locked onto their location.

-

Jim spent one night under a regen unit, drifting in and out of sleep while the lights on his biobed blinked and the machine hummed, and then the next morning getting his blood tested, and then it was like that away mission the day before hadn’t happened at all. When it came to the state of his health, at least. 

The actual aftermath of that mission was that he and Leonard were suddenly on speaking terms, and that Leonard stopped addressing him as Captain, and that they didn’t avoid being in a room together. This all became apparent when it came time to analyze the stone sample Leonard had dug out of Jim’s torso. 

They stood on either side of Spock in one of the xenogeology labs. Jim could see in the line of Spock’s shoulders that he did not appreciate the company. 

“This was extracted from Jim’s wound after returning to the ship?”

“Before,” they both answered in unison, and Leonard sounded almost as haunted by the memory as Jim was. Jim gave him a look, and Leonard crossed his arms over his chest, leaning forward to peer over Spock’s shoulder. 

“I suppose this was the right choice, although you risked contaminating Jim’s blood even further by performing the extraction without proper tools. N--”

“What choice did I _have_ , Mr. Spock? Let him drop dead from an unknown poison? Hope he’d have a pulse left by the time we got beamed up? I didn’t have my--”

“ _Nevertheless,_ ” Spock interrupted, and Jim resisted the urge to let his mouth hang open after witnessing Spock _interrupt someone mid sentence_ for the first time in his _life_. 

“Nevertheless, the stone fragment appears to contain a powerful paralytic agent.” Spock turned his head towards Jim. “Do you recall a loss of motor function?”

“Uhh, yeah, you could have called it that.”

“It was messing with his head. He was moving just fine.”

“Was I?” Jim asked, leaning forward so he could see Leonard. “I can’t even remember.”

“You were. It wasn’t a paralytic,” he said matter-of-factly.

“The properties of the fragment _clearly_ mimic that of any known paralytic in our database. Therefore--”

“You wanna test it on Jim again?” Leonard asked, raising his voice. 

Jim had been morbidly curious to witness the two of them having a conversation after only ever hearing about Spock’s disdain for him, but they were clearly approaching a line and Leonard had started to lift his foot to cross it. Spock was even more tense than before, his jaw clenching a little bit, and Jim intervened. 

“Okay, how about we divide and conquer on this one. Spock can keep running tests here,” he said, nodding to where Spock was glaring down at the microscope, “and the two of us can write up detailed reports on what my symptoms were yesterday. Everything we come up with can go to the xenogeology team.”

For a second it almost looked like the two of them hadn’t actually wanted Jim to defuse the situation. Leonard and Spock’s reactions to Jim’s idea were just as negative as their reactions to each other, in their tense posture and annoyed expressions, and then they relaxed. 

“Very well,” Spock said. 

Leonard followed Jim out of the lab, muttering, “ _I didn’t save your life just for you to give me a damn homework assignment_ ,” and when Jim snorted and looked over his shoulder, he could see a little glint in Leonard’s eye. He’d just made a joke.


	5. Chapter 5

Jim started inviting Leonard up for senior officer meetings after that. All of them, even if it had nothing to do with Medical and Spock visibly bristled every time he shared his opinion on something. Sometimes Leonard would also stay on the bridge for a little while after, watching the viewscreen like he didn’t know what to make of it, and then he’d grumble something and go back to Medbay. At first Jim wondered if the dynamic down there had changed at all, since Leonard’s claim that he _didn’t yell much_ _anymore,_ or if his staff was relieved at the breaks they were suddenly getting away from their CMO. 

So, since he and Leonard were trying out this new thing where they acted like colleagues, he decided to start going down there every so often to sniff it out. 

“What the hell are you doing in here,” Leonard deadpanned one afternoon, after the doors swished open and Jim walked into the middle of a commotion. He’d heard about a bug going around in Engineering last week, and from the look of all the red shirts on biobeds it was still making the rounds. 

“Just a Captain checking on his crew.” Jim grinned. 

Leonard rolled his eyes but, strangely, waved Jim over to him where he stood in front of one of the big computer screens. He’d pulled up a map of the Engineering decks. 

“Alright,” he started, “I don’t know what they’re even  _ doin _ down there that this thing has spread so fast, but from what Scotty told me the air ventilation in Engineering isn’t great anyway. They had two people faint last month.”

Jim nodded. He’d heard about this already, obviously, but the only solution would be for Engineering officers to spend less time crawling around in ship vents and jefferies tubes, which the officers themselves outright refused to do. 

“What are you thinking,” he asked. 

“I did some tests of air quality in a few spots. Based on range, I think you’d only need to install eight new air purification vents to increase air quality by 75 percent, which would decrease transmission and hopefully put a stop to someone  _ fainting _ at work in the 23rd century.” On the screen in front of him Leonard was pointing out different spots in the lower Engineering decks, marked with little red dots. 

It took a second for Jim to register that he was still talking to Leonard McCoy. This was like the nursing staff thing all over again, except this was hardly even _ his  _ department. When had he found the time to do air quality tests in Engineering?

“We’d have to order them,” Leonard added. 

Jim wasn’t even sure what to say, at this point, because he worried that direct approval or any sentiment of _ I’m impressed _ would piss Leonard off. So he just nodded. 

“Yeah, I think it could work.”

“Good, because I already sent the order.”

When he turned from the screen to look at him it was clear that Leonard had hardly been seeking approval so much as he had just called Jim over to  _ inform _ him of changes he was going to make to the Engineering decks. Jim knew it would annoy him the most if he repeated what he’d said in that cave about Leonard being good at running a ship, but god damn. Air vents in Engineering could have easily been ignored, and he’d started solving the issue before he even told Jim about it. 

Jim cocked his head towards the biobeds, “We gonna have anyone left to install them?”

Leonard looked a millisecond away from letting out an exasperated sigh as he swept his eyes across the medbay, but settled for just shaking his head, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“I want them wearing face shields, too.”

“To stop the spread?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Even if they wore them at work they’d still take them off and continue to interact with each other. I mean in the jefferies tubes. Do you know how many burns I’ve had to treat because  _ someone _ lets their Engineering officers do electrical work five centimeters from their face?”

His tone  _ clearly _ implied that this was Jim’s fault, so Jim took the opportunity to say, 

“You really care about this crew more than any CMO I’ve had, Doctor McCoy,”

and Leonard’s look of disgust was so immediate that Jim had to bite his lip to keep from smiling. 

“Get out of my Medbay,” he said, loud enough that Jim could see some of the nurses looking up and--laughing? Nurse Soto shook her head, smiling, and looked back down at her PADD. Jim felt like he was in an alternate universe. 

“Seriously, though, good work. I’ll let Scotty know about the new vents coming.”

Leonard rolled his eyes, probably at the second round of encouragement, and turned back to the computer. Jim took his cue to leave, but just as he was halfway across the room Leonard called after him,

“ _ And the face shields! _ ”

-

“I think it should be a costume party,” Nyota said.

“Oh, yes!” 

Pavel turned around for a second with a goofy, excited smile and Nyota just wiggled her eyebrows at him. 

“Do you know what happens when half of the crew tries to use the replicator at once to make costumes?” Hikaru chimed in, not turning away from the viewscreen. 

“Do  _ you? _ ” Pavel asked. The two of them glanced at each other and Hikaru was silent for a moment before he finally admitted, 

“Okay, no, I don’t.”

“I don’t know if I want to find out,” Jim said. 

“It’s our mission anniversary party, we can’t just show up in  _ uniform _ .” 

“Janice, you’re only saying that because you have the biggest wardrobe on the ship.”

“Hikaru,  _ you’re _ only shooting down everyone’s ideas because you don’t want to go.”

Jim leaned back in his chair and let everyone get carried away with party themes. They didn’t have that much to do this morning, anyway. Plus, he was waiting to see if Spock was ever going to chime in with an opinion. 

“Captain, I feel it’s necessary to remind the crew that this is a workplace environment,” turned out to be Spock’s opinion.

The bridge went quiet, half of them awkwardly looking back down at their stations and the other half still trying to mouth sentences to each other. Jim smiled. 

“So that’s a  _ No _ to costumes, from Commander Spock.” 

Nyota laughed and Spock just gave Jim a flat look before turning to his computer. 

“Has anyone invited Doctor McCoy?” Jim asked. 

Nobody responded, but Hikaru was apparently bold enough to turn around in his chair and raise an eyebrow at Jim, in a sort of unspoken  _ why would we do that _ .

“Nevermind.” Jim leaned his chin on one hand, looking out at the stars and very guiltily imagining dragging Leonard to the party and forcing him to bond with the crew he was stubbornly trying to ignore. Even better if it was a costume party. “I’ll do it.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's not actually a costume party (it had been decided before i posted the last chapter actually). but it IS a long ass chapter. maybe that makes up for it?

After a debate which lasted into the next day’s shift (when Spock actually did suggest a dress code, which was simply: all black), they finally ruled out costume party, white party, wear-the-wrong-department’s-uniform party, black tie gala, Sherlock Holmes themed mystery party, something called a “Russian style party” which Pavel refused to actually define, and Spock’s suggestion that everyone wear black, and settled on requiring that all attendants show up in civvies. 

It was the most reasonable expectation for a party on a starship, anyway. Nyota sent out the memo and called the theme “casual Friday”, only to have to send a second, corresponding memo after multiple follow-up questions that casual Friday was a capitalist term which meant  _ wear whatever you have in your closet that isn’t a uniform _ . They were shipwide memos, which meant Leonard would have gotten them, but Jim sent a personal comm to him just to be safe. 

**James T. Kirk (personal channel):** that means you too

**Leonard H. McCoy (personal channel)** : these kids don’t know what “casual Friday” means?

**James T. Kirk (personal channel):** are you about to say something which starts with “back in my day…” ?

**Leonard H. McCoy (personal channel):** back in my day I didn’t have a man named Jim Kirk in my comm bothering me during work hours

**James T. Kirk (personal channel):** you’re right

**James T. Kirk (personal channel):** I’ll bother you after work hours. at the anniversary party

Jim put his PADD away and felt pleased with himself for the rest of the shift, because Leonard hadn’t even put up a fight to this party memo. Maybe it was just because there would be booze, but a social event was a social event, and tonight was going to be the antithesis of Leonard’s stupid be-an-asshole-and-leave-in-six-months plan, if Jim had any say in the matter. As soon as their shift ended and they’d docked in a starbase so the Gamma crew could take the night off as well, everyone crowded into the turbolift, already joking around together. 

“Mr. Spock, are you still going to wear all black?” Pavel asked, and Spock just glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. 

“It would not be against the rules of casual Friday.”

“Come on, Spock,” Jim chimed in, “I know you have some Vulcan clothes in your quarters.”

“Indeed.” Spock nodded, and paused for a moment before saying, “they are also black.”

-

The casual dress code turned out to be the perfect way to get everyone in the right mood. The party took place in the same big recreation deck that everyone used on a normal day, the only difference being that all of the furniture was moved to the perimeter of the room and the lights were dimmed, but everyone showing up in their normal clothes seemed to bring a relaxed, light-hearted sort of energy. Jim felt like he learned more about each of his officers by seeing their unregulated outfits. 

Some clothing items were traditional, some Jim recognized from places where they’d spent shore leave before, and some officers clearly had not bothered to get new clothes since they were in the Academy, but everything worked, here. Ensign Chekov apparently had an affinity for Hawaiian shirts, because he was wearing two, one layered on top of the other, laughing with a group of lower deck Engineering officers, all of them in equally colorful outfits. 

Nyota apparently owned a pair of blue jeans. And Spock, true to his word, showed up in all black, including a long jacket with one of those high, Vulcan-style collars. Hikaru had one of those cheesy spray-painted t-shirts they make in beach towns, with palm trees and a sunset and the words _ I LOVE MY HUSBAND _ . Every single outfit in that room was incredible. 

Jim started to doubt the perfect party theme, though, when Leonard actually showed up--thirty minutes late, and wearing the exact same outfit he’d worn the night they met on that starbase five months ago. The night Jim had previously disregarded in the timeline of their relationship, because the Leonard he’d hooked up with was too far removed from the Leonard he knew on the Enterprise. And now he was walking through the Enterprise’s recreation deck during their mission anniversary party, wearing those same blue jeans and that brown leather jacket with the thermal shirt underneath. There was a shadow of stubble across his face, not as much as there had been when they met, but it was still enough. Enough that Jim was effectively speechless, struck dumb by the fact that he now had to reconcile his two very different impressions of this man, and admit that the part of his mind that found Leonard attractive hadn’t actually gone away, it had just hibernated for a little bit. 

God damn it. 

Leonard caught eyes with him and nodded, with almost a tentative look on his face, and Jim wondered if he could have had the exact same crisis just now, considering Jim probably also looked similar to how he did that first night they met. Dark jeans, t-shirt, leather jacket. Really, the only difference was that this time they weren’t undressing each other with their eyes. 

In fact, Leonard didn’t even walk up to Jim, instead choosing to get a drink from the bar and weave through the crowd for Christine, who was in a group with a few of the nursing staff, wearing a dark blue jumpsuit with her hair piled on top of her head, and dangly earrings that Jim was pretty sure belonged to Nyota. The group of them smiled when he joined them, and they all started talking. Jim was supposed to be happy about that, he knew. The  _ point _ was that Leonard learned how to socialize with the crew. 

Instead of forcing himself to face the fact that’d he’d been disappointed in seeing Leonard cross the room to talk to someone else, Jim went to the room’s computer and changed the music, and asked Janice (who was admittedly the best-dressed there in a flowing, almost iridescent pink dress which technically was not casual at all) to dance with him. 

Dancing was a good distraction, and when more of the crew started to join in, Jim was able to get over himself and remember that the point of this party was to celebrate his crew spending another year together. And if he glanced around the room every so often to check on Leonard, it was just to make sure that he was talking to someone instead of sitting in the corner. 

As Captain of the Enterprise Jim gave himself the very important role of spotting whoever was awkwardly lingering around the dance floor and be their dance partner until they eased up. It paid off. Soon enough everyone was laughing, changing partners every so often and cheering whenever someone did an impressive move. Hikaru turned out to be a really talented dancer, which made sense when Jim remembered the long list of other sports he did. 

Almost on cue, as soon as Jim started to feel tired he looked across the room and saw Nyota sitting at a full table, and waving him over. There was already an empty chair and a drink for him, it looked like, and Jim gratefully left the crowd to join them, shrugging out of his jacket as he walked. He laid it across the back of the empty chair and pulled up the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face--to a small chorus of catcalls from the table--and then sat down and promptly panicked at the realization that Leonard was seated at the table as well, directly across from him. And he had watched Jim do that. 

Jim sat down and went straight for his drink.

“So,” Nyota said, and Jim swallowed his awkwardness and turned to smile at her, “we were talking about the craziest things that have happened on this ship since we started this mission.”

Jim breathed out a laugh, pausing with his glass at his bottom lip. “Oh no.”

“Remember when you accidentally started a religion on Kaylon IX?”

“You  _ what? _ ” Leonard demanded from across the table, and the other senior officers around them just started laughing. Even Spock’s expression looked warm. 

“That’s not just breaking the prime directive, that’s running it over with your car and shifting into reverse to run over it again.”

Jim turned his head to look at Leonard, and was about to ask him where the hell that metaphor came from, but Leonard was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, in that stupid jacket that made his shoulders look all broad, his hair hanging over his eyes--so Jim decided to get defensive instead. 

“Look, who  _ hasn’t  _ accidentally started a religion??” he blurted out, and Christine’s laughter turned into wheezing. She leaned over her knees to catch her breath and Nyota slapped her on the back. 

Jim was gradually realizing which of his crew members could hold their liquor and which ones definitely couldn’t. 

“For all we know there were Humans worshipping Vulcans as gods after First Contact.”

“This is true,” Spock chimed in, and Jim pointed at him. 

“Ha!” he said, although he wasn’t really sure why he cared so much about proving this point. 

“The Church of Vulcan in rural North America met for nearly a century, before Vulcans began to integrate in Human society after the establishment of Starfleet Academy.”

Leonard cringed, as if that bit of information was a personal attack. 

“So starting a religion isn’t even that crazy,” Hikaru said, and he didn’t seem to notice at all that he was trapped between Spock and Leonard staring each other down. 

“The United Federation of Planets has recorded 57 incidents of starships or crewmembers accidentally becoming deified.” Spock took a sip of his drink, plainly ignoring Leonard now. 

“No, craziest thing that happened to us was the sex pollen from that plant you brought on board, Sulu.”

Exactly as Jim expected, Hikaru went from actively participating in the conversation to dropping his face into his hands one second later. 

“Sex pollen?” Leonard asked Jim. Why did he ask Jim. _ Why did he ask Jim _ . 

“That’s what we called it, anyway,” Jim said, feeling like he’d walked himself into a trap. 

Thankfully Christine, having recovered from the last conversation topic, was sitting up again and wiping her eyes. “It was more like a hallucinogen, but so many people reacted to it by getting aroused that we called it sex pollen.”

Leonard was staring down into his glass, now, thinking. Hopefully medical things, and not whether or not Jim himself had been affected by the sex pollen (he had).

“God, that was like, our first week, wasn’t it?” Jim asked, and Christine nodded. 

The whole table was silent for a minute, then, everyone probably thinking back through their memory. Hikaru was still eternally facepalming. Nyota’s hand remained on Christine’s back ever since she’d doubled over with laughter. Spock had turned his head to look at the stars outside the rec deck’s windows. When Jim’s gaze finally circled around the table to Leonard, they locked eyes. 

Jim felt frozen, again. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say to break the tension. 

“What about the transporter malfunction that switched Spock and Jim’s bodies?” Nyota asked thoughtfully. 

Spock’s eyes widened, like he’d been repressing that memory until now. 

“Don’t remind me of that,” Jim groaned. 

If hearing about the Church of Vulcan had been disturbing, Leonard looked outright traumatized by this information. Spock just continued to stare wide eyed at the window, and Jim couldn’t help but start laughing about it. 

“I have no idea why we’re all still employed,” he said, and Nyota giggled. Jim glanced back at Leonard, who was still sitting in disbelief of what he’d just heard, and probably what he’d heard ever since he sat down at this table. “See, this is what you’ll get if you stay on board with us.”

-

The party died down around 0200, and everyone started to clean up and slowly file out of the recreation deck and wander back to their quarters. 

“They better not all show up to Medbay tomorrow for hangover cures,” Leonard said, coming up behind Jim where he was clearing glasses from one of the tables. Jim snorted. 

“I think they’ll be more afraid of  _ you _ with a hangover than their own hangovers.”

Leonard sat back against the table, nodding like he knew he’d deserved that one. He usually got defensive when Jim reminded him of the fact that he had been a bitch to their crew on purpose, but tonight he just said, 

“You want a drink?”

Jim blinked at him for a second. 

“I feel like we should talk,” Leonard added, and a sentence like that _ used _ to come out dripping with layers of sarcasm. Now it was just casual, and normal, like their relationship had slowly become, up until tonight when Jim remembered that they’d had sex once--really good sex--and now everything felt a little weird. 

“Yeah, alright,” Jim said anyway.

They ended up above the rec deck, on the observation deck where the view was better. Jim collapsed into one of the chairs along the edge and Leonard took the seat next to him, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a flask. 

“You know those are banned from Starfleet vessels.”

“So are Swiss Army knives,” Leonard replied with a devilish sort of glint in his eye, “I checked.”

Jim shrugged and accepted the flask. “Fair enough.”

The flask turned out to be filled with really, really good bourbon. The kind that made Jim have to close his eyes for a second after the first sip, and tilt his head back and like, think about his life. 

“Good right?”

“Yeah,” Jim breathed. “Damn.”

He took another sip and passed it back to Leonard, who also seemed to take his time. Jim just looked out of the long, wide windows, at the blinking lights coming from the base they’d docked at, a maintenance worker in a spacesuit, doing repairs on the exterior of one of the docks, the stars spread out behind it all. Before he started to get too sentimental about his life, and all the luck it took for him to end up here, on his own ship, with his own crew he’d just celebrated another year with, Leonard broke the silence with that raspy, liquor-roughened voice (that Jim remembered way too well). 

“What did you mean,” he asked, _ “if  _ I stay on board with you?”

Jim sighed. That  _ had _ slipped out, hadn’t it. At this point, though, he couldn’t see a reason to keep holding back from having this conversation. Especially because this conversation was actually way easier than the one he’d expected them to have tonight. 

“I read your file, and I talked to Christine a while ago. She told me not to expect you to stay longer than six months before requesting another transfer.”

“She told you that?

Jim nodded. His head felt heavy from a very long day full of work and dancing and drinks. 

“What else did she tell you? That we used to work together?”

“And that you were married,” he blurted out, and immediately regretted it.

Leonard’s eyes widened for a second like he’d been cornered. Finally he relaxed, and let out a long exhale. 

“Yeah.”

Jim backtracked as much as he could.

“You don’t have to tell me about that.”

“Wasn’t gonna,” Leonard mumbled, taking another sip from his flask.

“Can I ask you something, though?”

Leonard glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, in a way that wasn’t exactly an encouraging  _ yes _ , but he hadn’t said  _ no _ . 

“Why do you do it? Jump from ship to ship, I mean. I’ve never heard of anyone who does that.”

He was silent for a few more seconds, tracing the edges of the silver flask with his fingertips, and then he screwed the top shut and looked up at Jim. There was something thoughtful in his face, like he was considering his answer as much as he was considering whether or not he would tell it to Jim. 

“I joined Starfleet after my dad died and my marriage started to fall apart.”

“Oh.” Jim hadn’t been expecting all of it at once. He didn’t really know what to say.

Leonard just saw his shocked expression and shrugged. “Figured if I left the planet altogether things would feel different.”

After months of wondering what the hell went on inside of Leonard McCoy’s head, Jim didn’t even have to try this time. 

And even though he already knew the answer, he asked, his voice low, 

“Did they?” 

Leonard shook his head. “At first, sure. The Academy was a distraction, they kept me so busy. And then my first job on a ship stressed me the fuck out for a while. But once things calmed down they got bad again.”

Jim didn’t say anything. He just watched Leonard in the dark, artificial-nighttime lighting of the observation deck. 

“At first I didn’t know what I was doing,” he continued, crossing his arms over his chest. “Especially after the divorce, I just kept moving forward, like if I left enough things behind it would make the universe even, or something. Finally I sort of realized when I was leaving another ship, the first place where I’d been CMO, that it made people upset when I left. But it just felt like the only thing I could do. And I sorta like the work of fixing Medbays, joining a crew and figuring out where they’ve been making mistakes. I got good at it.”

“Clearly.”

“I don’t know. I just keep moving. I need to.”

Jim thought about it for a second.

“That sounds like bullshit,” he said plainly, and Leonard nearly flinched.

“You know we’re all doing the same thing. Moving forward, I mean. The Enterprise goes through uncharted space for months at a time, for fuck’s sake. You’re not an anomaly.”

“What does that even--”

“It sounds more like you’re just looking for an excuse for why you sabotage yourself from being happy again.”

Leonard stared at him, his eyebrows knitting together. While Jim was at it, he went ahead and hit his point home, because if Leonard wasn’t planning to stay onboard anyway, there was no reason to hold back.

“And it’s really not a good reason to act like a dick to your staff, either.”

The air was so tense for a moment that Jim couldn’t move, but if he could’ve, he would have reached for the flask again. Finally Leonard looked down from Jim’s face, to some spot on his shoulder, and said, 

“You’ve got a point.”

-

“Flasks are banned from Starfleet?” Leonard asked while they walked through the corridor to the senior officer’s quarters. They’d left the observation deck after a few more minutes of shared silence, and by the time they got out of the turbolift the tension between them had faded completely.

“Yeah. Apparently someone got drunk and threw up on one of the shuttlecrafts for new recruits.”

“I’ll be damned,” Leonard said quietly.

“What.”

“I think that mighta been me.”

Jim stopped walking altogether so he could turn, and stare at Leonard.

“You’re kidding.”

Leonard shook his head, rubbing his hand against the stubble on his cheeks. “I don’t really remember that shuttle ride after I enlisted but I do know that I puked my guts out. They deposited my bones in a pile outside the med student dorms and I woke up for my first day of classes already with a formal reprimand slip on my door.”

“Oh my god,” Jim said, unable to stop himself from grinning like a lunatic.

“What are you smilin about?”

“We are gonna be such great friends.”

Leonard glared at him. 

“Get the hell to bed.”

-

Even though his last words to Jim had been  _ get the hell to bed _ , it was pretty clear that this was just Leonard’s way of communicating, and Jim felt justified in interpreting his grouchy demands like  _ get the hell to bed _ and _ get out of my Medbay _ as his way of  _ bonding _ too. 

Especially when he woke up, head pounding, to a comm from Leonard. 

**Leonard H. McCoy (private channel):** come to medbay for a hangover hypo. don’t tell anyone I make them.

They were definitely going to be great friends. Jim Kirk, unofficially named Most Likely To Burn Out In Five Years by his graduating class at the Academy, and Leonard McCoy, the pile of bones on the steps of the medical dorms, responsible for flasks getting banned from Starfleet vessels.


	7. Chapter 7

“Bones! There you are.”

Leonard McCoy was not a morning person, it looked like. Either the nickname or the volume of Jim’s voice, or maybe both combined, made him wince. And then he made some sort of noncommittal grunting sound and walked over to the replicators on the wall of the mess. 

Jim was actually alone in the mess this morning. Christine was nowhere to be found, even though they usually sat at separate tables anyway, unless Jim had questions about Medbay drama. Excluding her, there was no reason to expect any of the other senior officers to come down for breakfast for at least another half hour. 

He patiently waited for Leonard to get his coffee--after two tries when he didn’t pronounce it clearly enough and finally shouted at the computer--and breakfast, which turned out to be just two slices of wheat toast, to ask what he was doing here so early in the morning. 

“How do you make it to lunch on that?” Jim asked first. 

Leonard sat down across from him, bit off half of a slice of toast, and said, 

“None of your business.”

Jim breathed out a laugh through his nose and took a bite of his eggs. He gave Leonard a few more minutes to eat before trying once again to start a conversation. 

“You never eat this early.”

“You been watching me?” he demanded, and Jim had no idea when things had shifted, but he couldn’t find it in him to be annoyed or offended by Leonard’s aggression anymore. He stifled another laugh, biting his lip to keep from smiling. 

“Wow, you are really not in a good mood.”

Leonard glared at him through half-lidded eyes. He had finished with his second slice of toast, and moved on to his coffee, which was in a huge mug that Jim didn’t know the replicators even  _ had  _ for beverages. If he was really not in the mood to talk to Jim, though, he wouldn’t have sat down directly across from him, a point which he eventually proved after downing half of the cup. 

“Surgery on Lieutenant Harlow’s spine took most of the night.”

“Shit, I forgot about that. Is she okay?”

Leonard waved his hand dismissively. “She’s fine, she’s sleeping it off on a biobed now. Something I  _ tried _ to do until I was interrupted by two of my nurses sneaking into Medbay before Beta to fraternize in the supply closet.”

“No way,” Jim leaned forward in his chair, dropping his chin onto one hand.

He let out a long exhale, and nodded. “Now you understand why I care so much about keeping all of our equipment packaged in between uses.”

They just stared at each other for a second. This could have been a trigger for them to remember their first confrontation, and how much they’d hated each other after that first day. Instead Jim couldn’t take it anymore and snorted, and started laughing. 

Leonard watched him for a second, his face still severe and tired with dark circles under his eyes and stubble on his cheeks, and then he slowly broke into a smile too. 

“Who was it?” Jim whispered, even though they were the only ones in here. 

“Gonzales and one of the nurses-in-training, Rana.”

“In the  _ supply closet _ ?”

Leonard shrugged, and picked up his coffee mug again. “They gotta do it somewhere, they probably have shared quarters.” 

“Wait, did they see you?”

He leaned back in his chair, with his mug cradled against his chest, and looked way too self satisfied for the answer to be  _ no _ . “It’s safe to say they’ve lost their sex drive for at least a few days.”

Leonard took a slow sip of his coffee and Jim just chuckled and shook his head, thinking about those poor bastards who started their day excited to sneak off together and ended up face-to-face with Doctor McCoy, right after they’d woken him up from a nap. He wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them never showed their face in Medbay again, after an encounter like that. 

“Sneaking around in the supply closet,” Jim repeated, with a hint of nostalgia in his voice. Leonard raised an eyebrow at him. 

“That kinda thing take you back?”

He nodded. “I think I hooked up in every one of the physics labs back at the Academy.”

Leonard cringed.

“Thank god I had already graduated by then.”

“Come on, you don’t think we could’ve been friends?”

“I read your cadet file. I think I would have developed a heart condition chasing after you.”

“That’s not a no,” Jim said, and Leonard just rolled his eyes and drank his coffee, which wasn’t a  _ no _ either.

-

“ _ This is exactly what I was talking about, _ ” Leonard gritted out, breathing heavy. 

“What? Chasing after me? If anything we’re the ones being chased after.”

“ _ Fuck. You. _ ”

Jim just pulled out his communicator again, hailing Scotty. 

“How’s it looking on that beam up, Scotty?”

“Well you’re going a little fast down there, Captain,” he said. 

Scotty was being way too casual about this. Leonard would probably have something very funny and entirely inappropriate to say about it, except he was still a good six meters behind Jim, rushing to catch up, and Spock was so far ahead of them they’d lost track of his silhouette, and altogether the three of them were shooting across the rocky surface of the planet, away from this  _ thing _ \---

It had six legs. And claws that were nearly as long and sharp as its teeth. 

“Don’t really have a choice right now.” 

“If you stopped moving I would only need about three seconds to lock onto your location.”

“We’ll try to hide somewhere.” Jim’s comm nearly slipped out of his hand but he caught it, and yelled, “but you better be right about those three seconds!”

He looked over his shoulder to check on Leonard, who was actually getting closer, somehow. Either his survival instincts were kicking into full gear, and Leonard was running even faster, or Jim was losing steam. Either way they couldn’t keep this up. And the sound of six giant and clawed feet hitting the rocks on their trail was getting louder. 

“Bones!”

“What?” Leonard called out from behind him. 

“We need to stop somewhere!”

“In  _ what  _ universe?” He had caught up with Jim now, and they were both struggling to keep their pace, sweating and red faced as they tried to navigate the rocks jutting out of the ground. 

“Scotty needs three seconds to lock onto our location!”

“ _ Fuck me, _ ” Leonard groaned. They made it a few more paces before he grabbed Jim’s shoulder. “There. You see that?”

Up ahead of them was a rock big enough to hide the both of them, at the very least for the three seconds it’d take to beam the fuck out of there. Jim nodded and Leonard didn’t let go of his arm, effectively dragging him all the way there. Jim fumbled for his communicator again.

“Scotty. You see us?” he panted, leaning over his knees. His heart was pounding so hard and there was so much adrenaline in his veins right now he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to sleep again.  _ If _ he lived through this, of course. Leonard was even more winded than he was, his whole body shaking, but he stayed pressed against Jim so they could both fit behind the rock, hand still clasped around his arm, and he craned his neck just enough to see around the side. 

“Jim. It’s coming.”

“ _ SCOTTY-- _ ”

The next few seconds were wiped clean from Jim’s memory, until he was watching the light beams fade around them on the transporter pad. His upper arm was killing him, and at first he figured that maybe the whatever-it-was had actually caught up and bit him before Scotty beamed them up. And then he blinked a few times to clear his vision, and looked to his left, and Leonard’s hand was clinging onto his bicep like his life depended on it. 

About a second later, Leonard seemed to come to the same realization that Jim had. He shot his hand away and they both collapsed to a seat to catch their breath. Jim stuck his head between his knees, fighting off nausea like he used to when he ran too hard in high school PE. Leonard covered his face with his hands and breathed through his fingers. Finally, chest heaving, he gave up entirely and flopped onto his back. 

“Welcome back!” Scotty cheered from behind his station. “Now that was a close call, wasn’t it?”

_ Close call. _

Jim shot his head back up. 

“Wait,” he said, “what about--”

Spock was standing right next to Scotty, looking untouched by what had happened down there except for his windswept bangs. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. 

“Okay,” Jim breathed. He dropped his head down between his knees again. “Nevermind.”

-

Apparently  _ surviving _ a life-or-death situation took nearly as much recovery as an  _ actual death _ would have. Jim had groaned when Leonard put him on mandatory bedrest--well, when Leonard told Christine to put them  _ both  _ on mandatory bedrest, technically--but once Jim was discharged from Medbay and his adrenaline levels went back to normal, he found that he actually could not manage to lift one single finger off of the surface of his bed. 

His entire body screamed at him for what he’d put it through on that planet. Some of his muscles were so sore it felt like he’d been cut open, and even though he hadn’t been bitten there was  _ definitely _ still something fucked up with his left arm. 

Jim collapsed into bed with his boots on and promptly slept fourteen hours. He only woke up at the fourteen hour mark because he was so thirsty his body forced him up and out of bed. He steadied himself against the bathroom counter and drank straight from the sink faucet for a while, and then ignored the throbbing pain in his legs and took a shower. 

Someone buzzed his quarters just as the sonic cycle ended, and although Jim felt like he was getting dressed as fast as possible, by the time he made it to the door in grey sweats and socks he honestly expected there to be nobody outside anymore. 

Instead, there was Leonard, looking as strung out as Jim felt. He was wearing the same set of Starfleet-issue sweats and leaning against the side of the doorway, face pale and lifeless.

“Hey Bones,” Jim said, and stepped to the side to let him in. 

“I’m going to kill you,” was Leonard’s response, and he was apparently so dead inside that it was devoid of any aggression whatsoever, and therefore sounded ten times as horrifying. 

Leonard followed Jim into his quarters and fell backwards onto the couch, setting down some sort of briefcase onto the cushion next to him. He’d probably explain whatever it was later. Or maybe it contained the tools with which Leonard intended to kill him. Regardless, Jim padded to the replicator in his quarters and said, 

“You want a burger?”

He wasn’t even sure what time it was.

“Please.”

Jim ordered the computer to make two burgers. 

“With ketchup,” Leonard said, and Jim, even in his state, managed to turn and look at the man sitting on his couch with his head leaned back against the cushions and his eyes squeezed shut, and remember something as clearly as if it had happened the night before. 

Jim set the tray with his ketchup-covered burger down on Leonard’s lap. “I still think that’s gross.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion that night, Jim, and I’m not asking for it now.”

“Fair enough.”

It wasn’t until at least an hour later, after they’d both eaten--and replicated more food and eaten that--and Leonard had opened up the case he brought and unpacked a set of those electrode pads, the kind with wires coming out of them that sent pulses through the muscles until they felt numb, and both of them had stripped to their boxers right there on the couch and stuck them on until they looked like androids, that Jim realized what had happened after Leonard walked into his quarters. 

“That night” meant  _ that night _ . The night when Jim and Leonard were different people who had a different relationship with each other. And the two of them talking about  _ that night  _ also meant that they weren’t pretending to ignore what had happened before and after Jim had made fun of Leonard’s ketchup-eating habits back then. 

But by the time Jim realized this, backtracking wasn’t exactly an option. He was completely out of options, actually, because he and Leonard were sitting next to each other on the couch with their legs covered in electrode pads, like the saddest DIY spa day in existence. 

“Is this supposed to feel good?”

“Hell if I know.”

“It doesn’t feel good.”

Leonard dropped his head back against the couch again and threw an arm over his eyes. “Feels better than running for my life.”

“You keep saying that like it was my fault.”

“You’re the Captain, that means I get to blame you for everything.”

“Wish they’d put that in the job description.”

Leonard snorted. 

Jim looked down at his legs, covered in little white squares with wires trailing back to the electrode unit. At least it didn’t feel worse. If anything the numb, prickly sensation in his muscles was better than the heavy soreness he’d woken up with. 

“Modern medicine doesn’t have a better solution than this yet?”

“Technically you can use a dermal regen but you have to crank it up to the highest setting and it hurts like a bitch. TENS pads are like, half as effective, but it’s not a bad bargain.”

“What are you gonna do about the hand-shaped bruise you left on my arm.”

“Did I?” Leonard moved his arm away and lifted his head. 

Jim pulled off his sweatshirt and immediately felt cold in just his white t-shirt, but the look on Leonard’s face when he caught sight of the dark purple bruise on his arm was worth it. His eyebrows shot nearly halfway up his forehead.

“Shit, I did that?”

“Yeah.”

“Hold on, sit up.”

They both wriggled to a more upright position, legs still bound by a mess of wires, and Leonard reached for the case of supplies he’d brought and pulled out one of the smaller, hand-held dermal regenerators. He scooted closer on the couch. 

“Is  _ this _ gonna hurt like a bitch?” Jim asked, feeling goosebumps on his skin. 

He scoffed, mumbled, “I’m sure you’ve had this done before,” and rolled Jim’s shirtsleeve up to his shoulder. The machine whirred on. It didn’t feel that different from the electric pulses in his legs, actually, but it was definitely at a stronger setting than when Jim had needed a dermal regen in the past for cuts and scrapes. 

“I can’t remember.”

“I bet you used to get scraped up every chance you got.”

“Didn’t have you there to patch me up afterwards, though.”

Jim had been watching Leonard’s face as he focused on running the regen unit over the bruise that wrapped around his bicep, but in that moment Leonard looked up, and there was something hanging in those few seconds of eye contact that made Jim’s mouth go dry. 

The machine kept whirring. Leonard looked back down at the bruise. 

“You still think we would have been friends?”

“I think the only thing that made us  _ not  _ want to be friends was having to work together.”

Leonard huffed out a laugh. With one hand he started to adjust the position of Jim’s arm, so he could run the regenerator over the edges of the bruise. Jim shivered. 

“Cold?”

“I guess.”

Actually, he wasn’t really sure. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)


	8. Chapter 8

Jim was starting to get restless. 

After nine months on board, Leonard still hadn’t left the Enterprise. Or made any sort of attempt--if he had requested a transfer Jim would have been notified. Even when Jim had asked him about it that night after the party, he hadn’t confirmed if he was planning to leave like he always did or not. Jim didn’t know what  _ planning to stay _ would look like either, if Leonard was dropping hints in that direction. At this point the thought was hanging over Jim wherever he went, like a dagger that could drop at any second. It would just take that little ping from his PADD, the notification that one Doctor Leonard McCoy, CMO, was requesting to be reassigned by Starfleet, and the dagger would split his life in two. 

By all accounts Leonard was happy on the Enterprise. His staff didn’t look miserable anymore, and nearly all of them had been promoted. Christine had a lighter workload and was supposedly spending half of her free time with Nyota (not that Jim listened to ship gossip, or anything). The new additions to the sciences department Leonard had requested a few months ago were settling in. He’d developed some strange dynamic with Spock where the two of them started conversations with each other  _ on purpose _ , even though they disagreed the whole time. 

And, the hardest part to reconcile, he and Jim were friends. Actual friends, who hung out after work and comm’ed each other when they were bored and ate breakfast together sometimes--even though the amount of coffee Leonard drank was deeply, deeply disturbing. And it still felt like any minute Jim could get that notification that Leonard was requesting to leave the Enterprise, as if all of that meant nothing. Maybe Leonard had become friends with his past Captains, too. 

He’d have to write a recommendation. God, what the fuck was he going to write for that? He tried not to think about it, but at the same time he didn’t want to be caught off guard, but at the same time--

“What’s on your mind?” 

Oh, right. Leonard was on the bridge right now. Jim didn’t remember inviting him, but that had been happening more often, whenever Medbay was empty and Leonard felt like making fun of Jim and pissing off Spock during his work hours. 

“Nothing,” Jim lied, when there were, in fact, about 20 different things on his mind at once.

“You look stressed.”

“I’m fine, Bones.”

Now that Leonard wasn’t directly--well,  _ intentionally _ \--the cause of Jim’s stress anymore, he seemed to care way too much about his mental health. 

“You been sleeping?”

“Yeah,” he lied again, and abruptly broke off the conversation by raising his voice to ask, “Mr. Sulu, what’s our position?”

“Just about to enter the Sigma Quadrant, Captain.”

“Right on time,” Jim said to himself. Leonard apparently got the message. He pushed off from where he’d been leaning against the Captain’s chair. Jim turned to glance at him, and he definitely looked like he knew Jim was lying about being stressed about something, and he didn’t look happy about it either. But they were on the bridge, for god’s sake. Jim wasn’t in the mood to have a full blown therapy session. Their eyes met for a second before Leonard turned to go. 

“I’ll be in my office. Holler if you need me.”

“I highly doubt a ‘holler’ would reach the Medical Bay considering the soundproof infrastructure of the ship.”

“Thank you for that, Mr. Spock,” Leonard shot back over his shoulder. Jim smiled and shook his head, settling back into his chair for the rest of the shift. 

But he still felt restless, even after Leonard had gone.

-

Their next stop after the Sigma Quadrant was a planet called Baltor, where Jim had scheduled them for a weekend of shore leave a few months back, after the party when he realized the crew needed something else to look forward to. The most popular shore leave destinations were the ones with beaches, of course, but Baltor had a sort of mountain charm to it, like those campgrounds families went to in old movies. The crew would be staying in a series of cabins, all connected by a footpath that wove through the trees and up one of the mountains, and the weather was set to be misty and cool. Perfect for hiking and campfires, but all Jim could think about was sleeping late, and sitting on the porch for hours with nothing else to do. And maybe pancakes. 

Cabin assignments had been a bit of a headache. Their past shore leaves had been spent in simple complexes with double and single rooms, so Jim just went by how quarters were already assigned on the ship, but each cabin had two or more bedrooms, and he’d made the mistake of having officers send in requests for who they wanted to bunk with. 

Sorting out all of the requests turned out to be so much work he’d had to bring in Janice. 

Jim forgot about all of that, though, once Pavel and Hikaru had set course for Baltor. When they approached the planet it looked so much like Earth, green and blue and covered in clouds, that an appreciative hum echoed through the Human officers on the bridge as they all watched the viewscreen. 

“Let’s get this party started,” Jim announced as Hikaru brought them to the docking station that orbited the planet. Out of the corner of his eye, Spock’s posture went a bit stiff. Jim, Spock, and Leonard were all bunking together in one of the smaller cabins. 

“Captain--”

“Figure of speech, Spock. Our cabin will be party-free.”

“Ours won’t,” Hikaru said, and Janice stifled a laugh from her station, which she poorly translated into a cough. The two of them were in a cabin with four other lieutenants. Based on the look they shared a second later, Jim knew that they  _ definitely  _ had a stash of booze already packed. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've christened 2020 the year of self-indulgent writing. enjoy my mountain fantasy

Conversations and laughter echoed through the woods as soon as they all beamed down. Jim did some hiking in the early afternoon, tagging along with Scotty and Gaila and some other Engineering officers, stopped at Nyota’s cabin on the way back to drink tea with her and Christine, and then trekked down the trail to his own cabin, to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. The cabin had two bedrooms, one double and one single, and Jim considered it for all of one second before choosing to bunk with Spock rather than see what would happen if they made it a discussion. He and Spock weren’t strangers to sharing a room, anyway. 

He wasn’t around in the afternoon when Jim was napping, so he rolled around in the creaky bed as much as his heart desired, and then woke up an hour or two later, to the sound of gentle rain outside, and an incredible smell coming from the kitchen. 

Jim wandered through the cabin in bare feet and almost wondered if he was still in some sort of dream. 

“Are you….cooking?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing,” Leonard said plainly. He looked up from the stove and saw Jim looking still half-asleep and somewhat dazed in the doorway and added, “it’s just bacon and eggs.”

“Bacon and eggs is _ never _ just bacon and eggs.”

“Well, they’re replicated, I just wanted to use a pan. Sit down, I’ll make you some.”

“I must be dreaming.” Jim sat down in one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table, rubbed his eyes and watched Leonard’s back as he stood over the little hot plate in the kitchen. Almost entirely decorative, considering there was a replicator next to it that made cooked food as well, but vacationers had a thing for replicating  _ ingredients _ and doing the rest themselves, evidently. 

Leonard was standing in the kitchen in his jeans and a black thermal with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and he looked like he was already taking advantage of the fact that he didn’t have to keep his hair styled. Something about watching him cook, out of his blue uniform, made Jim wonder about when Leonard had been married. There was nothing about that in his file of course, but if he was married before he applied to the Academy, he must have been pretty young. Jim wondered if they’d had that married-couple routine--breakfast on the weekends, date nights on Wednesdays, that sort of thing. If they fought. If they’d had a wedding. So many questions came up in his head that he wanted to ask Leonard, and he realized he shouldn’t have let himself think about it in the first place. 

And then there was a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon being set down on the table in front of him. 

“Thanks,” Jim said, and Leonard grunted, sitting down across from him. 

He put ketchup on his eggs, too, but Jim let that one slide. 

“My dad always used to take me to places like this.”

“In Georgia?”

“No, we’d drive all the way up to the Smoky Mountains. We used to tent camp, until he started complaining about his back, and then we’d rent a cabin every year.”

Jim’s head ran with just the smallest details, and he could already picture it. Father and son waking up at the crack of dawn to drive into the mountains. Father complaining a little more each year, and son, Leonard McCoy, growing up in his image to become the galaxy’s champion complainer. 

“Like father like son.”

Leonard snorted. “He probably was bothered by sleeping on the ground the whole time, he just wanted me to have memories of the rough stuff. It’s what I woulda done.”

“No kids?” Jim asked. 

It was the only marriage-related question he’d allow himself. Leonard looked up from his eggs. 

“You think I’d be here if I had a kid?”

“Didn’t stop my mom.”

Something flashed through Leonard’s eyes, then--concern, maybe--and softened his expression. He set his fork down, like he wanted Jim to know he was listening, if he wanted to keep talking. 

“You know my dad died when I was born.”

“Yeah,” he said, in that same tone he always used when Jim was injured, careful but nonchalant. “I recognized your name. We had to learn about it in--”

“Federation History 202: Hostile Confrontations, yeah.” 

Jim remembered it like it had just happened, even though it was almost eight years ago, now. That day they’d covered the USS Kelvin--the worst day of his second year at the Academy. It would have been the worst day of his whole academic career, if they hadn’t covered Tarsus IV in his third year ethics course. Jim shrugged it off though, all of it, shaking his head to break the memories loose. 

“I was always alone on Earth, I think that’s why I was in such a hurry to leave.” Jim breathed out a laugh. “Always felt like I was being punished for something.”

Leonard just watched him from across the table for a second, his face still open and a little bit hurt, like he could already fill in the blanks of all the things Jim wasn’t telling him--the runaway older brother, the piece-of-shit stepfather, nights spent in jail--he almost looked like he was going to say  _ I’m sorry _ , which Jim wouldn’t even know what to do with. Instead he just said, 

“You’re not alone anymore.”

“No.” Jim felt those words warming him up from the inside, until it spilled over and he smiled to himself, staring off at the wall behind Leonard’s shoulder. “I’m not.”

As if on cue, Spock showed up seconds later, the screen door creaking when he came inside the cabin. They could hear him scraping the mud off of his boots and unzipping his jacket, and then his footsteps trailed to the kitchen. 

“Hey Spock.” Jim turned to look at him in the doorway. His hair and the bottom half of his pants were wet from the rain, but he didn’t seem to mind. 

“Good afternoon.”

Leonard turned around in his chair. The two of them hadn’t looked thrilled when they all arrived at their cabin together (even though both of them knew about this arrangement in advance) but so far they’d gotten by with minimal bickering. Jim wondered if there was something special about mountain air and wood-paneled cabins. It seemed to make everybody relax. 

Instead of commenting on his wet hair or demanding to know what Spock had been doing outside all afternoon, Leonard asked, “You want some?” and if Jim wasn’t mistaken it sounded like a peace offering. 

Spock looked at him for a moment. It had been surprising enough when Leonard cooked for Jim, but if he extended that same kindness to Spock, maybe Jim would believe in miracles. 

“I am a vegetarian,” Spock said simply, and left the room. Leonard turned back to face Jim, rolling his eyes. 

“ _ Doesn’t he know that replicated meat isn’t actually an animal product, _ ” he muttered, and Jim felt warm inside all over again. 

-

Jim was in his pajamas pretty early that night. He’d taken a shower--a real shower, with hot water--and figured he wouldn’t go anywhere else until the next morning, anyway. Spock replicated dinner for himself after patiently waiting for the kitchen to be cleaned up, and the two of them ended up at the coffee table in the living room with the chessboard between them. 

Jim wasn’t playing well at all, he felt distracted, but he didn’t really care. Spock checkmated him three times, looking entirely pleased with himself, and Jim just feigned disappointment before setting up the board again. He was on shore leave, which meant he could lazily play chess until he either beat Spock by sheer luck or fell asleep on the living room rug, whichever came first. 

“Hey, nerds,” Leonard interrupted, leaning in the doorway that connected the living room and his bedroom. He’d put on a thick, navy blue sweater over his shirt and jeans, and laced up his boots. 

Spock narrowed his eyes at the chessboard. “Hello Leonard.” 

“What’s up?” Jim asked. 

“The rain let up and there’s a bonfire at Christine’s,” Leonard said, by way of invitation, “unless you wanted to spend the rest of the night doing the same thing you do on the ship.”

Jim and Spock looked at each other and Jim shrugged. Spock looked like he was actually considering it, with his head tilted to the side, until he said,

“I would welcome the chance to meditate undisturbed.”

“Well, we’ll miss you,” Leonard deadpanned, without missing a beat. Jim had figured he was really only trying to invite one of them, anyway. He stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching Jim expectantly. 

“I don’t know why you think name-calling is going to encourage me to go with you,” Jim said, and pushed himself up from the floor to get dressed, so he could go with him. 

-

It was less of a bonfire and more of a full-blown party, that sprawled out from their cabin and onto the porch, and into the damp grass of the small yard. And there was also a fire in the fire pit. It felt like half the ship was there, although there couldn’t have been more than 50 of them in that little space. Jim made sure to greet them all by name before he got to the end of his first beer and lost track. 

“I don’t know why you care so much about greeting your crew.”

“Every one of them is important, from the bridge to the lower decks,” Jim said, standing on the porch and looking out at the people joking and drinking and dancing around the fire pit. “Wait, speak for yourself, Bones. You were the one who dragged me out here in the first place.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Leonard demanded, but he was smiling around his words. He had his arms crossed over the wooden rail and he looked at Jim over one shoulder. There was something about his demeanor lately that just seemed different, and maybe it was just the sweater or his unstyled hair or the fact that he was on solid ground, but he almost looked--comfortable. 

“You _ wanted _ to come out and socialize.”

“And?”

“On one of your only days off, too. Correct me if I’m wrong, I think you’re starting to like the Enterprise.”

“You’re wrong,” Leonard said, and took a sip of his drink, but it was so obvious he was lying. He couldn’t even keep a straight face. Jim pretended to shake his head in disbelief. 

“Well, I’ve tried all I could to get you to stay with our crew. The rest is up to the stars.”

Before Jim realized what he’d just said, and Leonard had the chance to ask him what the hell it meant, Christine showed up next to Jim, leaning out over the rail to look at both of them. 

“This guy bothering you?”

“Yes,” Jim said, and stuck his tongue out at Leonard. 

Leonard rolled his eyes. “Feel free to take him off my hands.”

“Well the Medical staff wants to know how well you can limbo.” 

Before Christine had even finished the sentence, Jim was on board. He shoved his beer bottle into Leonard’s hands. 

“Hold my beer.”

“Call me when he slips a disc!” Leonard called after them. 

-

By the time everyone started to leave to find their own cabins along the trail, the sky was totally dark. Baltor had moons, but the trees were too thick for much light to get through. Jim and Leonard set off on the small trail that led back to their cabin, using the dim light shining from in between the leaves to see the path below their feet. 

The walk shouldn’t have taken them longer than fifteen minutes, but they kept stumbling and bumping into each other, and Jim felt like they were lost, and finally he stopped altogether.

“Hold on, I have no idea where we are.”

He could hear Leonard’s footsteps as he came to stand next to him. 

“We’re still on the trail.”

“But what if we took a wrong turn?”

“I don’t think there are any turns.”

Jim looked around, but his eyes had already adjusted in the dark to the best of their ability. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, wondering if that last beer he’d had was a good idea. It seemed like a good idea when he was sitting at the campfire singing  _ Take Me Home, Country Roads _ with half of the Medical staff. Leonard hadn’t joined in, but Jim saw him from the other side of the fire, with the warm light from the flames glowing around his face, and could tell he was enjoying the whole thing. 

He sensed Leonard looking around, could see his figure in the darkness, and guessed that he probably wasn’t having any more luck seeing in the dark than Jim was. 

“I can’t see anything,” Jim said.

“Me neither.”

“I guess we’ll die out here.”

Neither of them spoke, then. Jim listened to the wind rustling the leaves, and far away, an echo of another group of crewmembers--probably struggling to find their way, too. He took a deep breath of the woody, still-damp air. 

Jim could hear his boots scraping against the ground as Leonard shifted from one foot to the other. 

“You think I’m going to leave the Enterprise?” he asked, and his voice sounded loud above all those little sounds Jim’s ears had just picked up on. 

Jim shrugged, even though it was too dark for either of them to really see each other. Leonard was just a blur in front of him, surrounded by tree-shaped blurs. “You haven’t really indicated otherwise.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.”

“You haven’t stayed on any of the other ships you’ve worked on.”

Leonard scoffed. “Other ships didn’t have you onboard,” he said, and Jim could feel, in the silence that followed, that he regretted it. The air got tense. 

“I mean--” Leonard tried again.

“Bones.” It was the only word he could pick out of the thoughts swimming around his head. 

“I’m not leaving the Enterprise, okay. That’s all you need to know.”

“Is there more?”

Footsteps, then. Leonard’s. Under the pressure of this conversation he’d managed to find a second wind to navigate back to their cabin again. Jim followed after him, trying not to trip over anything. 

“Bones,” he repeated, firmly, and he didn’t stop to ask himself why this all felt so urgent, why he was essentially chasing after Leonard. He was afraid of the answer. But still he caught up to him, grabbed his arm until he stopped, and demanded, “Is there more.”

Leonard sighed. Jim felt the soft, thick fabric of his sweater underneath his palm, and instinctively grasped his hand tighter around Leonard’s wrist, pleading him for an answer. 

“Of course there’s more,” he said quietly. 

The rush of adrenaline Jim felt through his body at those words told him all he needed to know about why he cared, and why he’d followed after Leonard just to ask him that, and why he hadn’t let go of his wrist. Why he’d been so afraid lately of getting that notification from Starfleet. 

Jim let go of his wrist, took another two steps, until they were close enough that Jim’s eyes could adjust in the dark just a little bit more, and see his face. Leonard almost looked like he was panicking. His eyes were wide, and his eyebrows drew together nervously, and when Jim was brave enough to lift one of his hands to cradle the side of his face, feeling the line of his jaw and the rough stubble against his palm, Leonard exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. 

So Jim kissed him. Just once, gently, but when he pulled back Leonard stopped him by wrapping an arm around his waist. Everything happened so fast, then. Leonard’s other arm reached out to catch against one of the trees behind Jim, and then he pushed him forward, against the trunk, pressed their bodies together until Jim gasped, and kissed him back. 

Jim couldn’t remember ever getting kissed like this. It was like the darkness made his other senses go into overdrive. The only skin-on-skin contact was the press of their mouths, and Jim’s hand against Leonard’s face, but every place where their bodies met felt electric, even through layers of fabric. Just the knowledge that Leonard was trapping him against the tree like that, with his palm resting on the surface of the trunk above Jim’s head, made his knees feel a little bit weak. There was the smell of Leonard’s shampoo, his cologne, the laundry soap from his sweater, the smoke from the campfire. The traces of liquor on his tongue when Jim opened his mouth to deepen the kiss. 

And he was breathing, hard, they both were. Jim’s body turned on like it had been waiting all day--or maybe even longer--to have Leonard so close. 

Jim broke the kiss and tilted his head down, letting his hand fall from Leonard’s face to his chest. He just breathed, for a second, and felt Leonard’s chest rise and fall underneath his palm. And Leonard stood there with his lips just barely pressed to the bridge of Jim’s nose, his arm still raised, his other hand spread out against Jim’s lower back. It felt like hours. He shivered in the cold. 

“Let’s go back,” Leonard whispered. 

“You’re not leaving?” Jim asked again, and he knew before he’d even said it that he sounded silly and insecure, but he had to ask it. He had to hear Leonard’s answer one more time, before they walked away from this spot. 

“I’m not.”

“Okay.”

Almost as soon as they started on the trail again, they saw their cabin in the distance, golden light coming through the living room windows. It turned out to only be about a minute’s walk away from where they’d stopped to kiss underneath that tree. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, i'm extending this fic by another chapter, but i wanted to have something conclusive while it's still october. some feel good epilogue-y stuff will be coming soon of course ;)

Jim tried to give the whole situation the benefit of the doubt. He really did. He gave it his best shot. But it was no good. 

They made it back to the cabin and Spock was still awake, and it didn’t feel right to sneak into Leonard’s room that night--as much as he wanted to--and pick up where they left off. 

Anyway, it felt like they still had time. The next morning they drank coffee out on the front porch, and Jim’s whole body was buzzing with sense memory while Leonard stood next to him, their shoulders almost touching, except Spock finished meditating and came out to join them, and when Jim jokingly suggested they all took a hike together, he didn’t expect that they would actually do it. 

Up on the mountain Leonard slipped on one of the steeper parts of the trail and Jim caught him, his hands shooting out instinctively, and Leonard’s hand lingered just a little too long on his shoulder, and they looked at each other--and that was it. They brushed themselves off and kept walking. 

But they still had time, Jim reminded himself, except when they made it back to their cabin Jim remembered he’d invited the whole bridge crew over for dinner. It was a nice evening, of course it was, but Leonard kept meeting Jim’s gaze from across the table and all of a sudden he could feel that there was a clock counting down, a window of time to address what had happened in the woods after Christine’s bonfire and if they missed it, and got back on the ship, the memory would be gone. Filed away like the first night they spent together. And that night, it was the same story. All of them sat out on the porch with mugs of tea and hot chocolate that sent steam into the air, and it just wasn’t the right time.

They beamed aboard the ship early the next morning, everyone yawning and bundled up in the cold. 

Jim dropped his bag back at his quarters and changed into his uniform, and when he bumped into Leonard in the corridor on his way to the bridge, the touch of their shoulders made them both jump out of each other’s way, and Jim knew right away that they’d missed their window, just like last time. 

He tried to shrug it off. They’d done this whole song and dance before and still managed to work together. It could be just like last time.

Except, unlike last time, he was fucking pissed about it. 

-

By the time he got off his shift that evening he almost wondered if he’d blown everything out of proportion. It was just a kiss. They had been drinking, they were on shore leave, they lost their way in the woods and they kissed each other. Maybe it wasn’t any deeper than that. 

Jim got on the turbolift. 

_ No _ , he changed his mind again, _ it wasn’t just a kiss _ . It was nearly a _ year  _ of getting to know each other in the wake of what felt like an immediate connection the night they’d met. It was forgetting that connection, starting over from zero, and ending up in the same place. It was Leonard’s own fucking words--that he was breaking his pattern because of Jim. 

The collar of his uniform felt too tight, and his feet were sore from hiking, and he was hungry, but he got off the turbolift and saw Leonard disappearing around the corner of the corridor towards his quarters, and pushed all of that to the back of his mind and followed him. 

“Bones, wait,” he said.

“Jim.”

They both stopped at the doors to Leonard’s quarters. 

“We should talk about something.”

Leonard looked him up and down for a second, nodded slowly, and keyed in the code to open the doors. 

Even if Jim had dreamed their entire encounter in the woods (which he also hypothesized during what had felt like the longest shift of his life today), the sight of Leonard’s quarters was proof enough that he didn’t plan to leave the Enterprise any time soon. Personal items were everywhere--old, hardcover books, picture frames, his clothes from the trip in a pile over the back of the couch--and he’d rearranged the furniture, and changed the sheets on the bed and the settings for the lighting, and the whole place smelled like him. Jim forgot his sense of urgency for a second, and just looked around. An old fashioned globe of Earth on his desk. Blue curtains on the windows. 

“Wow.”

Leonard was still standing at the doors while Jim snooped. 

“I sorta just let myself go in here.”

“No it’s...it’s really nice. I like it.”

“So what did you want to talk about,” Leonard asked, and Jim took a second to compose himself, to think about his next words, to look at the stars through the gap in the curtains. Of course Leonard would put curtains up. Finally Jim sighed and turned around.

“Look, we can’t keep doing this.”

Leonard rubbed his palm against his cheek, looking down at a spot on the carpet. It must have been a slow day in Medbay; he hardly looked disheveled at all, just a little tired, maybe. He looked back up at Jim. 

“Which part of it do we need to stop?”

Jim forced himself to take a deep breath. He turned again, back to the stars and the blue curtains. He wasn’t really sure where to go from here. The doubt crept back in that he’d just made a big deal out of it, and that was all. Until Leonard said,

“I waited up for you, two nights ago. I thought you’d come.”

He could hear Leonard’s footsteps, coming closer, until they were standing side by side. 

“I know.” 

Jim shook his head against the pang of guilt that hit him. 

“I wanted to, I just couldn’t. It wasn’t the right place.”

“I know.”

“But--” they were moving closer, they had been for a while now, and their shoulders touched, and Jim could see flecks of gold in the brown of Leonard’s eyes. “We could try again,” he said, voice so low it was nearly a whisper, “right here.”

“You want to?” 

“Of course I do. It’s just--”

“Against the rules?” Leonard asked next, raising his eyebrows like he was ready to call  _ bullshit  _ if Jim agreed. 

“No. I mean, it kind of is, but--”

“Just spit it out already.”

Jim huffed out a sigh, at himself more than anything. “It has to be real, okay. I don’t want to just fool around and pretend it didn’t happen the next day.”

If only Jim from eight years ago--hell,  _ two _ years ago, even--could see him now. Holding himself back from sex because he didn’t want to get his feelings hurt. He couldn’t deny it anymore that space and time and being a captain had changed him, turned him into this person who holds onto things and looks before leaping. 

Maybe he had been right in thinking his first night with Leonard would change his entire love life afterwards, because he was certain he hadn’t been like this before. 

“I felt something--I do. I don’t know, maybe I always did.” Jim breathed out a sad sort of laugh and rubbed his eyes. “I guess I just forgot about it when I was standing in your office trying not to punch you in the face.”

Leonard barked out a laugh, and Jim looked up at him. His smile quickly faded but he was blushing, a little bit, which didn’t seem right considering Jim was doing a terrible job talking about his feelings. All throughout their relationship since he’d come on board Jim could have stopped at any moment and perfectly articulated how much he hated or tolerated or was-starting-to like him, and all of a sudden all he could come up with was a confession full of  _ I guess  _ and  _ I don’t know _ and  _ maybe I _ , and Leonard was turning red. 

“I had half a mind to resign from my job on the Enterprise that morning I woke up next to you.”

“No you didn’t,” Jim said, his voice barely loud enough to form the entire sentence. 

“I really did. I spent a decade going from ship to ship and that was the only time I didn’t feel like it was all for nothing.”

Jim just covered his face completely, then, with his hands. He was trying to think of the last time someone had told him something like that, something that made him feel like his heart was filling up with water, and his mind just kept coming up with Leonard. His face, his voice, all the things they’d already said to each other. 

“I’d follow you anywhere, even if you punched me in the face back then,” Leonard said, “and I probably woulda deserved it, if you had.”

“Just shut up,” Jim whispered. 

Leonard had been so close that Jim’s entire body was on edge, but it was his hands coming around his waist that finally allowed him to breathe again. Jim exhaled, everything, and dropped his hands from his face and looked at Leonard, eyes darting from his eyes, to his mouth, to his tinted cheeks, to the neckline of his uniform, he couldn’t decide where to look. 

“You mean that,” he asked, but it didn’t feel like a question in the end. 

“I do.” Leonard nodded, leaned in just a little bit more, and kissed him. 


	11. Chapter 11

Ten months ago Jim had forced himself to hold everything back--the questions he wanted to ask, the feelings he had, even his  _ name _ , for fuck’s sake. But this time he let everything go. 

He pushed himself up on one elbow and turned to look at Leonard in bed beside him. His Leonard, now. His Bones. His eyes were closed, and his face was relaxed and his body was loose, like he’d just woken up, his hand resting on his chest and his hair falling onto his forehead, and Jim couldn’t believe he’d already seen all of this before and managed to move on with his life afterwards. 

“Bones,” he said.

“Mmmh.”

“How long were you married?”

Leonard opened one eye to look at Jim. “You think you’re entitled to that answer now that we’re in bed again?”

“As a matter of fact I do.”

Leonard sighed and rubbed his eyes before giving Jim his full attention. 

“Six years.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head, looking around the room as if the answer to why a marriage should fall apart could be hiding on the ceiling or maybe in the corner next to the bookshelf. Jim just waited. He didn’t know why he needed to know, he just did. 

“We were too young, for starters,” he said, and actually scooted closer to Jim under the sheets, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard. He’d switched out his standard-issue bedsheets for a brown and blue bedding set that was somehow infinitely softer than standard-issue, and the sheets pooled around his waist and made his pale skin look beautiful, and gave Jim a whole new appreciation for the blue of his uniform that he saw him wear every day. 

“Life happened, I guess,” he continued, “We jumped into it. I was a kid and I was grieving, and I pushed her away after that first year, left Atlanta altogether, left the planet. Even when we were together though it felt like I could never satisfy her.”

Jim hummed. He didn’t relate to this part as much as he had to other stories Leonard had told him. He’d never had a serious relationship, really. The closest he got to serious was six months with another cadet, which they refused to label, and which ended terribly and sent Jim into a week-long bender which somehow resulted in him getting crossfaded enough to come up with the idea for how to hack the Kobayashi Maru. 

To be honest, the longest, most serious relationship he had was probably with the Enterprise herself. And by extension, with his crew. Leonard--what they had, even at this point--was uncharted territory. 

“Thinking of your next question for me?”

“No.” Jim pulled out of his own thoughts and smiled at him. “That’s it for today.”

“Thank god.”

“You could never satisfy her, though? Was she having sex with the right Leonard McCoy?”

Leonard rolled his eyes, but when Jim closed the distance between them on the bed, he still settled his arm around him.

“I’m not making fun of you,” Jim said quietly, tracing one fingertip along his chest, down the line of his sternum and onto the soft plane of his stomach. “I’ve never had a serious relationship, honestly.”

“Then it’s a wonder how you tricked me into this one.”

Jim wanted to refute that--well, the whole  _ tricked _ part--except the acknowledgement that they  _ were  _ something, that they were serious, had the strangest effect on Jim’s body. It felt like warmth coiling around his heart and glowing there, in his chest, and Jim leaned his head up to kiss him. 

Space had changed him, it was undeniable, but he decided he didn’t mind anymore. 

And Leonard's hands touched his skin and Jim felt warm everywhere. There was this excited energy running through his entire body, from the crown of his head down to his toes. It made him restless, almost, like he had to do something, so he wrapped his arms around Leonard and pulled until he was lying on top of him, still touching him with those incredible hands, still kissing the side of his neck, underneath his jaw, his chin, the corner of his mouth. 

Sex hadn’t felt like this in a long time, maybe ever. That first night when they’d hooked up again and again there was a sort of freedom, in the fact that they didn’t know each other, but everything was more important now because Jim knew him. He knew those hands that had healed his cuts and bruises and gave him hyposprays, and operated on him once in a fucking cave, and when Leonard slid his hand down the line of Jim’s chest, around the curve of his hip and underneath his thigh, Jim remembered all of those things that came first. 

Jim opened his eyes again, as he wrapped his legs around Leonard’s waist, and recognized the same man that had made his life a living hell for a while, even without that famous scowl on his face. He saw the slightly different versions that came next, after they managed to tolerate each other enough to talk, and then laugh together, the Leonard he saw in the glow of the bonfire on Baltor, who had watched him like that the whole night, and then….this. Leonard in his quarters, who’d basically told Jim he loved him a few hours ago. 

He wouldn’t have had it any other way, he was pretty sure. 

Leonard slipped inside him again, slowly. Unlike the first time a few hours ago, when they were in such a hurry to make up for lost time that Jim nearly got a concussion against the headboard--now it felt like they had all the time in the world. So Jim just breathed, as Leonard pushed deeper, and leaned forward until his face was tucked into the curve of Jim’s neck. 

“We could have been doing this the whole time?” Jim whispered, and he felt Leonard huff out a laugh, their chests pressed together. He was so warm, even now that they’d kicked the sheets down to the foot of the bed. 

“I don’t think it woulda been like this.”

_ Fair enough, _ Jim thought. 

“Mmmh. Maybe not,” he mumbled, and gasped when Leonard started to move. 

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, again and again, and Leonard pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. Every thrust sent sparks through Jim’s body. All he could do was hold on, his hands pulling at Leonard’s back, his shoulders. He slid one hand up to the back of Leonard’s neck, where his hair was cut short, and tugged until Leonard lifted his face from the bed and he could kiss him again. Jim let everything overwhelm him, the feeling of Leonard inside him, the smell of his shampoo, the rough stubble on his face when they kissed, the ache where Leonard’s hands held him too tight. Everything washed over him, all over again with every breath, and Jim knew that in this moment he was exactly where he needed to be in the universe. 

_ I’d follow you anywhere _ , he remembered Leonard saying. And he was pretty sure he believed it. 

-

“Captain, we’re approaching the disturbance in the Delta Quadrant. It should come into view in a second.”

“Approaching our death, more like,” Leonard said a second later, when the viewscreen showed a wide, dark mass spread out in front of them. They were in charge of figuring out what it was. He pointed at it. 

“Do you see that thing? That’s what they show at the beginning of a horror movie before the ship gets swallowed up into another dimension.”

“That’s the spirit, Bones.” 

“Doctor McCoy,” Spock chimed in from his station, “I believe you would prefer to spend your working hours in the Medical Bay, where you could avoid such visual reminders of our location in space, and resume your education via science fiction films.”

Jim fought back a smile, biting his lower lip into his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Leonard’s reaction, where he stood next to the Captain’s chair, and Spock behind him, stirring the shit.

“Or perhaps, while you are there, do your job,” Spock added. 

Leonard’s body tensed up for a second, and then he relaxed again, and said,

“Nope, that’s fine, Mr. Spock, I think I’ll stay right here.”

Now Spock was the one who went tense around the shoulders, but pretended to be entirely neutral and stared down at his computer screen with an intensity that Jim had never seen before. 

The rest of the bridge watched the viewscreen as they got closer. In the middle of what looked like a long cloud of violet-black smoke, was some sort of floating rock, too small to even be considered a meteor, but sparkling like there was something emitting light from the inside. Jim heard his crew whispering guesses to each other. 

“I don’t know,” Hikaru finally said, “but if this is a black hole and we get sucked into another dimension, my husband is gonna kill me.”

“It cannot possibly be a black hole.” Pavel gestured at the screen. “There’s literally a rock just floating there.”

“Maybe there’s something special about the rock,” Janice suggested. 

“I don’t like this,” Leonard grumbled. 

Everyone seemed to be waiting for Jim’s decision, then. Hikaru glanced over his shoulder. 

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Jim asked, “Let’s drive into this  _ black hole  _ and pick up the rock.”

Hikaru shrugged and turned back to the viewscreen, piloting the ship straight into the smoke. 

Leonard lasted all of one second. 

“Are you outta your goddamn mind?” he demanded, “leading us straight into this-- _ thing _ that Starfleet is telling every other ship to avoid altogether, Jim you’re gonna get us blown up or  _ worse _ \--we don’t even know what’s gonna happen as soon as the hull comes in contact with--”

Jim turned in his seat and grinned at Leonard. 

“You know, technically, we never know what’s going to happen.”

Leonard glared at him. 

“I’m gonna kill you one of these days, is what.”

Jim just kept smiling at him as he huffed and marched off the bridge into the turbolift, probably headed back to Medbay to distract himself from what the ship was about to do. Jim looked over the back of his chair and they locked eyes for a second before the turbolift doors closed, and Leonard just crossed his arms and shook his head back and forth, but Jim could see the tiniest bit of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The doors closed and Jim turned back around. 

“You’re welcome, Spock,” he said, and Spock pretended he didn’t know what Jim meant by that. 

He’d make it up to Leonard tonight. If they didn’t get sucked into a black hole, of course. But, to be honest, that applied to every day they spent on the Enterprise. 

_ end.  _


End file.
